Prince Harry ‘deliberately destroyed’ potential evidence relating to phone hacking claim, court hears

Prince Harry 'deliberately destroyed' potential evidence, the High Court heard - Neil Mockford/GC Images

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 – [email protected]; [email protected] and [email protected] – were no longer accessible.

However, the Duke’s legal team has searched other email accounts to which he has access – [email protected] and [email protected], 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”.

David Sherborne described NGN's disclosure application as a 'fishing expedition' - Jeff Gilbert

The Duke and more than 40 others are suing NGN over alleged unlawful information-gathering and invasion of privacy. A trial has been scheduled for January.

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.”

Mr Hudson replied: “It is of great concern. It needs to be clarified in very short order.”

The court heard that Prince Harry had received “two encrypted hard drives” comprising work documents from his staff’s shared drive, to which he originally claimed he no longer had access.

However, just hours before the High Court hearing on Thursday, it emerged that they had been found, one at his California home and the other at the office of his US lawyer.

The Duke has insisted he is not aware of any other portable data storage devices, Cloud storage locations or back-up tapes in his control. According to court documents, he has conducted “extensive” searches, including a physical search of his home in California.

He claims he no longer has any laptops, mobile telephones, desktop PCs or backups of his data from before September 2013, and that his former Hotmail email addresses, used pre-2014, had been deactivated and were no longer accessible.

‘Utterly disproportionate exercise’

The Duke has also contacted Lord Christopher Geidt, Elizabeth II’s former private secretary, Sally Osman, a former director of royal communications, Sir David Manning, a former UK ambassador to the US and Nick Loughran, his former deputy communications secretary, who said they did not hold anything relevant from the time period.

A revised draft order, sent from NGN to the Duke’s legal team this month, requires the Royal Household, Sir Clive and Sir Michael to provide hard copy and electronic documents held by the household that record or contain communications “sent to or by, on behalf of, or relating to” the Duke.

Mr  Sherborne said the suggestion that his client had “dragged his feet, had to be dragged kicking and screaming, had set up some kind of obstacle course” was incorrect.

He said it had taken 130 hours to search 35,000 emails and that only “a handful” were relevant, describing it as an “utterly disproportionate exercise”.

Mr  Sherborne said NGN had had two years to make the disclosure application but had previously chosen not to, with “no explanation” for the delay.

The judge said: “There was the little matter of the application to strike the whole claim out.”

The hearing continues.

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