Harry ordered by judge to explain destroyed messages

The Duke of Sussex has been ordered to explain why messages with his ghostwriter were deleted as he continues to battle with News Group Newspapers

Harry has been ordered to make an interim payment of £60,000 in legal costs to News Group Newspapers. Picture: AFP

The Duke of Sussex has been ordered to explain why messages with his memoir’s ghostwriter were “destroyed” amid concerns about his search for evidence in a privacy case.

Judge Timothy Fancourt expressed “real concerns” about searches by Prince Harry’s team for potential evidence in the case against the publisher of The Sun.

He questioned the deletion of Harry’s exchanges with John Moehringer on the Signal messaging app, as well as drafts of Harry’s memoir, Spare. He said it was “not transparently clear” why this happened.

The judge ordered Harry’s lawyers to carry out further searches of his laptop and WhatsApp and Signal messages from 2005 to January last year for evidence potentially relevant to the litigation concerning allegations of unlawful information gathering.

He ordered Harry to make an interim payment of £60,000 ($114,000) in legal costs to News Group Newspapers, which is owned by News UK, the British sister company of The Australian, after ruling at a one-day hearing in London largely in favour of the publisher’s application for a wider search for evidence.

Justice Fancourt said there was evidence that “a large number of potentially relevant documents” and “confidential messages” between Harry and his ghostwriter “were destroyed sometime between 2021 and 2023, well after this claim was under way”, adding: “The position is not transparently clear about what exactly happened and needs to be made so by a witness statement from the claimant himself explaining what happened.”

The judge said this should cover what attempts had been made to retrieve the Signal messages. He said Harry’s exchanges with Moehringer may have “related to the parts of Spare in which unlawful information gathering in relation to newspapers was discussed”. He said this was “apparently contradicted” by Moehringer, who previously said he and the duke were “texting around the clock”.

In his oral ruling, the judge said he had “real concerns” the issue was being “inadequately” dealt with by Harry’s legal team, and the majority of searches for material had been made by the duke himself. He said Harry had “only disclosed five documents as being relevant”, describing this as “rather remarkable”.

David Sherborne, representing Harry, said the disclosure application was a “fishing expedition”, accusing NGN’s barrister, Anthony Hudson KC, of using language to “get a headline”. He said the suggestion Harry was withholding or destroying material was the “height of hypocrisy”, saying NGN had deliberately deleted millions of emails as part of a way to hide incriminating evidence.

Opposing the application, he said there was no suggestion the searches demanded would produce any relevant information.

THE TIMES