Prince Harry’s British lawyer David Sherborne was in court again this week for yet another hearing in Harry’s case against NGN, News Group Newspapers, aka Rupert Murdoch’s British media arm. Harry is part of a class-action lawsuit against NGN for phone hacking and other criminal activities. This has already dragged on for years. This week’s hearing was about NGN’s demands that HARRY provide emails, texts and WhatsApp messages from over a decade ago to the court. Obviously, a lot of that stuff is just… gone. Old email accounts, old phones, old servers, etc. Would you be able to provide text messages from eleven years ago in court? Very few of us could. But my larger question is: why would the plaintiff have to provide reams of communications with palace senior staff to the court when he’s suing a newspaper for hacking HIM? Well, that hasn’t stopped the British media from running stories about Harry “deliberately destroying” these records. GMAFB.
The Duke of Sussex “deliberately destroyed” potential evidence relating to his High Court phone hacking claim against the publisher of The Sun, it has been claimed. News Group Newspapers (NGN) is seeking the release of emails, as well as text messages and WhatsApp messages, sent and received by the Duke, and material held on two encrypted hard drives. The publisher is also demanding to see records of communication between the Duke and Sir Clive Alderton, the King’s private secretary, as well as Sir Michael Stevens, the Keeper of the Privy Purse and treasurer to the King. It wants access to the many texts sent between the Duke and JR Moehringer, the author who ghostwrote his memoir, Spare.
David Sherborne, for the Duke, said the pair communicated via Signal and their chat history was wiped before the book was published in January last year. He said three Hotmail addresses used by Prince Harry prior to 2014 – spikewales@hotmail.com; spikewells@hotmail.com and bazasales69@hotmail.com – were no longer accessible.
However, the Duke’s legal team has searched other email accounts to which he has access – h@sjpkp.com and ha@sjpkp.com, which span a period from January 2014 until April this year, for three keywords, and is now searching them for the 55 search terms sought by NGN.
Mr Sherborne described NGN’s disclosure application as a “fishing expedition”. The Royal family’s solicitors, Harbottle and Lewis, have insisted they hold no documents that are “in the claimant’s control”.Anthony Hudson KC, for NGN, accused the Duke of “obfuscating” and said that if he wanted access to documents from his former solicitors, or from the Royal household, he would be given them. He accused the Duke of “trying to create an obstacle course” to prevent the publisher obtaining potential evidence and said his legal team had been dragged “kicking and screaming” to search a cache of 36,000 potentially relevant emails.
“There ought to be proper evidence about this,” he told the court. “Those messages are clearly within his control, even if they have been deleted. That’s why we say the search for texts and WhatsApps is important. It is, I’m afraid we say, another example of the obfuscation in relation to the claimant’s case. We say it’s shocking and extraordinary that the claimant has deliberately destroyed…”
Mr Justice Fancourt interrupted the barrister to say: “Well we don’t know what has happened. It’s not at all clear.”
The back-and-forth between Sherborne and NGN’s lawyers gets even weirder beyond this, but I’m not going to excerpt the whole sorry state of it. Basically, NGN thinks that they can run to court and call Harry names and accuse him of all kinds of destruction-of-evidence when NGN has a long history of doing exactly that, destroying evidence. Every accusation is a confession when it comes to the Windsors and when it comes to the British media. It absolutely feels like a fishing expedition on NGN’s part, and even more than that, they’re fishing for content to run in real time. They’d love nothing more than for Harry to turn over years of communications with palace senior staff which NGN lawyers will then turn over to The Sun so they can create even more content.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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- Prince Harry arrives at The Royal Courts Of Justice in London, England, UK on Tuesday 28 March, 2023. He is part of a group suing the Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) in the High Court over phone hacking allegations.,Image: 765639979, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: Please credit photographer and agency when publishing as Justin Ng/UPPA/Avalon., Model Release: no, Credit line: Justin Ng / Avalon
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- Prince Harry arrives at The Royal Courts Of Justice in London, England, UK on Thursday 30 March, 2023. He is part of a group suing the Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) in the High Court over phone hacking allegations.,Image: 766139790, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: Please credit photographer and agency when publishing as Justin Ng/UPPA/Avalon., Model Release: no, Credit line: Justin Ng / Avalon
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- Prince Harry departs The Royal Courts Of Justice in London, England, UK on Thursday 30 March, 2023. He is part of a group suing the Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) in the High Court over phone hacking allegations.,Image: 766160448, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: Please credit photographer and agency when publishing as Justin Ng/UPPA/Avalon., Model Release: no, Credit line: Justin Ng / Avalon
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- Prince Harry departs The Royal Courts Of Justice in London, England, UK on Thursday 30 March, 2023. He is part of a group suing the Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) in the High Court over phone hacking allegations.,Image: 766160529, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: Please credit photographer and agency when publishing as Justin Ng/UPPA/Avalon., Model Release: no, Credit line: Justin Ng / Avalon
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- Royal Courts of Justice, London, UK. 7th June 2023. Prince Harry leaving the Royal Courts of Justice, with his lawyer, David Sherborne, following his second day giving testimony in the witness stand. The Duke of Sussex is suing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) for damages over alleged unlawful information gathering, including phone hacking and is the first senior British royal to give evidence in court for 130 years.,Image: 782000910, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: Supplied by AVALON – Fee Payable Upon Reproduction – For queries contact Avalon – sales@avalon.red London: +44 (0) 20 7421 6000 Los Angeles: +1 (310) 822 0419 Madrid: +34 91 533 4289, Model Release: no, Credit line: Photo by Amanda Rose / Avalon
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- February 9, 2024, London, England, United Kingdom: Prince HarryĂââ s lawyer DAVID SHERBORNE Is seen arriving at High Court. London United Kingdom – ZUMAs262 20240209_zip_s262_059 Copyright: xTayfunxSalcix,Image: 845081328, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: imago is entitled to issue a simple usage license at the time of provision. Personality and trademark rights as well as copyright laws regarding art-works shown must be observed. Commercial use at your own risk., Model Release: no, Credit line: IMAGO/Tayfun Salci / Avalon
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- February 9, 2024, London, England, United Kingdom: Prince HarryĂââ s lawyer DAVID SHERBORNE I seen reading the PrinceĂââ s statement outside Rolls Building after the royal givenĂââ substantial damages in Mirror hacking case by High Court in London. London United Kingdom – ZUMAs262 20240209_zip_s262_050 Copyright: xTayfunxSalcix,Image: 845081362, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: imago is entitled to issue a simple usage license at the time of provision. Personality and trademark rights as well as copyright laws regarding art-works shown must be observed. Commercial use at your own risk., Model Release: no, Credit line: IMAGO/Tayfun Salci / Avalon
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- February 9, 2024, London, England, United Kingdom: Prince HarryĂââ s lawyer DAVID SHERBORNE I seen reading the PrinceĂââ s statement outside Rolls Building after the royal givenĂââ substantial damages in Mirror hacking case by High Court in London. London United Kingdom – ZUMAs262 20240209_zip_s262_045 Copyright: xTayfunxSalcix,Image: 845081374, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: imago is entitled to issue a simple usage license at the time of provision. Personality and trademark rights as well as copyright laws regarding art-works shown must be observed. Commercial use at your own risk., Model Release: no, Credit line: IMAGO/Tayfun Salci / Avalon
I hope the judge will admonish (or whatever the legal term is) NGN and shut this whole thing down. Seems like harassment or something. Harry isn’t on trial, the newspapers are.
I smell alot of rats with the blessings of KC3, Willie and the men in grey. They just won’t give up nonsense until KARMA jams their gears.
It’s always with their blessing, also their encouragement. His ds father is no parent.
And given what Kaiser said, it’s opposite day again. Everything Harry is accused of, they’ve done.
Dream on, dick heads.
The corporation would or should have document retention policies that would have preserved documents from that time period. Harry is an individual and he didn’t hack himself so it makes no sense to pretend he’s destroying evidence when it’s just old emails and texts.
The ISPs could access this information anyway.
It’s actually a statute of limitations issue. NGN is arguing that the plaintiffs knew about the hacking years before they brought the suit after the statute had run out. The plaintiffs have claimed they only learned the extent of the criminality in recent years and couldn’t sue sooner. NGN is arguing, no, you knew we were criminals a long time ago and did nothing. They think old emails and texts will prove Harry always knew. It’s a pretty funny argument for NGN to make. 😆
I am not sure they could do this as subject access requests have to be very specific. Also for legal reasons the prior drafts of SPARE would be protected to the extent that they could remove them for disclosures.
It’s just legal bluster to attempt to widen the extent of a request to see what you can get to intimidate the opposing party, although the extent to which that would work is debatable.
@Nic919 and @Brassy Rebel … What Kaiser didn’t include is that NGN lawyers are also demanding prior drafts of “Spare” along with those emails and texts of ‘communication’ between Harry and his Ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer.
This is definitely fishing. They just want to prior drafts of Spare so they can publish what was left out of the book. I hope the judge is savvy enough to catch this. But then, Meghan’s Judge was savvy and still allowed Associated Newspapers access to her text records. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Whaaat? Wow. Just wow. Why in the world should they have access to prior drafts of spare? I mean I can guess the argument they would make to get them but they shouldn’t get them.
What in the actual hell? WHY would ANYONE have the right to read previous drafts of Spare? This is absurd, and the derangers are dumb enough to bumble right into a situation where they are calling for an investigation into Harry’s emails when the same thing done to their “favorites” would surely end the monarchy.
As was stated above, Harry didn’t hack himself. Please, do set the precedent that you think royal family members should reveal their private correspondences with palace officials and any authors, ghost or otherwise. That will end well for England.
They did the same thing to Meghan. They wanted to search for “Kate”, “Africa” on her emails. She was suing them for illegally publishing her personal letter. That’s why people are afraid to go to the court against these clowns. They are trying to make more money on your life, it is all so sh*tty that the court allows these kinds of arguments on court.
I’m very surprised they didn’t redact the actual email addresses. Even if no longer accessible via legal means, this seems like doxxing to me…basically calling on every Russian server to search back through email archives and publish all Harry’s emails against his will.
Fishing expeditions are unfortunately all too common in legal battles but I wonder if this isn’t also a shot across the bow at the Royal Family from Murdoch? “Honor our deal and get Harry to shut it down, or alllll kinds of shenanigans on the part of the Palace will see sunlight,” just as it did in Meghan’s lawsuit…
“ basically calling on every Russian server to search back through email archives and publish all Harry’s emails against his will.”
That’s exactly why they published the emails. They want hackers to go after Harry and possibly Meghan.
These people are terrible.
Good points.
The british has no press- they have a criminal enterprise.
I delete my texts every couple of months. Usually in conjunction with a day being depressed, or sometimes just to wipe the slate clean.
I occasionally screen shot- to keep a few things, but that is more like- i have a college friend group text- we’re not super active, but once in awhile something will come up (usually something silly) and we will text a bunch and laugh quite a bit.
The laws seem so different- in the US Fox News has been tried its damnedest to conceal texts, and other communications regarding the Dominion and similar lawsuits – because it shows they knew the election wasn’t “rigged” even though all of their “news” people claimed it was on tv.
The texts proved they were big liars. And it made a lot of us happy.
But the british media – they are all about finding any information – especially unrelated to the subject of the case so they can publish private conversations and make millions.
The UK needs to burn their “media” to the ground and start over with real investigative journalism (the royals would be so screwed)
And yes, i realize the US corporate run media is not far behind in being a disservice.
Every time i see how “high wages” for the lowest earners has caused huge price hikes in goods- with ZERO mention of how corp profits have gone up wildly high- i remember- the corporations are controlling the media.
Sorry, soapbox. But the media should be the heroes in our society- not the petty pr arms of the powerful.
This. The British media has radicalized people who want to murder all of the Sussexes, some of them are in prison, but sure. Let’s all pretend like all of this is quintessentially British, and charming in that way of a spinster aunt who tuts a lot and fusses about tea.
You nailed it, the rota are a criminal enterprise. I don’t understand how anyone in England thinks this is okay, much less Harry’s actual family. The Windsors are despicable.
🎯
Wasn’t the firm in charge of archiving his documents and emails? Since I’m assuming they were probably all through palace accounts.
The messages they’re saying have been deleted has already been seen by NGN’s lawyers infact I’m 80% sure that they hacked Harry the second time and have those messages in their possession but can’t release it because it’s illegal and want to fish through legal means.
Also aren’t those email addresses supposed to be redacted? It’s like they’re putting the address out to bait hackers
Harry is being accused of obstructing Justice bc he doesn’t have old text messages? Can’t the phone companies retrieve them. But I he uses the bigger point is trees aren’t necessarily relevant messages but they want content for current stories. The criminals sure don’t make it easy for anyone to bring them to Justice.
Holy autocorrect on this comment🫣
From Co-Pilot: Recovering text messages from 2011 would be highly unlikely. Text message recovery typically relies on local backups on the device or cloud services, which usually don’t retain data for more than a few years at most. Additionally, if the phone is no longer operational, it further reduces the chances of data retrieval.
For messages sent that long ago, even if a server had stored them temporarily, they would not be retained for over a decade due to data storage policies and privacy concerns. Mobile carriers also have data retention policies that usually don’t extend beyond a few years for text messages, primarily for privacy and security reasons.
I’m SHOCKED that the newspapers are allowed to publish his e-mail addresses, especially the ones to which they claim he still has access. Harry should just say that thanks to this report, his e-mails were hacked and wiped and therefore he really has no access anymore. Everyone who has made this point is correct. It is a fishing expedition. If he was still using the ones to which he has access then he will have to stop immediately now that they are in the public domain.
All of this is just a fishing expedition and a delay tactic. It’s also a way to create negative headlines. The judge needs to shut this down. Harry didn’t hack anyone or pay for illegally sourced information. Try as they might, the mission continues.
Why is NGN asking for messages between Harry and JR Moehringer? This has nothing to do with the case.
Because they want to know what those 400 cut pages say. Denigrating him for suing but being as happy as Templeton at the fair for reporting opportunities is how they roll.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4vyr567q8o
There is more detail contained with the report on the BBC website as to why the Judge considers that PH’s messages with the ghost writer of Spare may be relevant.
Maybe I’m dense but why would any correspondence between Harry and his ghostwriter for his memoir be relevant to his court case? This is what the article People.com focused on and while maybe Harry discussed some of the legal court stuff with his ghostwriter, I can’t see why the judge or NGN would need those records? Are they trying to dig up the stories that Harry chose NOT to publish in his memoir? How would that help them? It doesn’t really make sense as to why NGN would want Harry’s communications with palace staff either. I’m guessing this is just a tactic on NGN’s part to drag things out but… I don’t see why any of the info they’re claiming was “destroyed” (how many of us have abandoned email accounts over the years or unable to log in because we can’t remember the password) would be relevant to their defense that they didn’t engage in phone hacking? I’m so confused.
He said the prince’s exchanges with writer JR Moehringer on the Signal messaging app may have “related to the parts of Spare in which unlawful information gathering in relation to newspapers was discussed”.
This is from BBC report. I can’t honestly remember Spare focusing much on phone hacking and suspect this is a fishing expedition because they want access to this missing 400 pages?
Honestly the papers may want those 400 pages but that should terrify the RF if those become public.
So NGN has illegally obtained data in those emails that it wants to disclose but it can’t because, they got it illegally?
If so, funny that the criminals have access to data that bazasales69 deleted years ago.
NGN may have a free, illegal data bank back up for Prince Harry should he ever need to recover lost data.
The BRF should be terrified from these turn of events. Requesting the emails between Harry and his Spare ghostwriter show the media is ready to break the invisible contract between it and the palaces. The BM is losing money from doing puff pieces on the “working” royals and reporting on royal scandals is more lucrative. It doesn’t mean Harry doesn’t have a back up medium for the 400 pages.
NGN knows that there is enough facts and evidence to prove the case against it in court, but are aware that if Prince Harry does not accept their offer to settle and wins in court, that he is liable to pay their cost of their defence for wasting the court’s time?
So they are stalling, and acting in bad faith by publishing unfavourable articles from the Fox, the Sun etc. and filing(s) like the above in court..
Should he accept their offer, which he might because of the high costs of lawyer’s fees, they will then be bare-faced and said that they did not victimized him by their past coverage..
The Telegraph is effectively doxxing Harry, here, by including his email addresses.