Prince Harry has been ordered to explain himself after the publisher of The Sun said the royal “deliberately destroyed” potential evidence related to his phone hacking suit against the tabloid, The Telegraph reports. At a hearing yesterday, June 27, a lawyer for News Group Newspapers (which is owned by Rupert Murdoch ) accused Harry of deleting drafts of his memoir, Spare , as well as communications with his ghostwriter, J.R.
Moehringer, that might be relevant to the ongoing lawsuit. NGN was seeking a potential trove of information — including emails and texts, plus material on two encrypted hard drives — that they said would’ve been generated after the suit against NGN was brought in 2019. (Harry is one of over 40 people involved in the case, which is set to officially begin next January).
The judge overseeing the case, Justice Timothy Fancourt, agreed with NGN’s lawyer, saying there was “troubling evidence that a large number of potentially relevant documents and confidential messages between the Duke and the ghostwriter of Spare were destroyed sometime between 2021 and 2023, well after this claim was underway.” Fancourt said the Duke of Sussex and his legal team must try to retrieve the messages between the lawyer and Moehringer. He also said they must get in touch with other royal family officials and ask them to submit any records of communication with Harry.
Harry’s lawyer, David Sherborne, defended the royal’s disclosure practices up to this point, .