Prince Harry has to plead for help from government ministers in his ANL court case

We ended up getting a few photos of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at the Canucks hockey game on Monday night in Vancouver. They were seated with Marcus Anderson, one of Meghan’s close friends. Every photo I’ve seen of them in Canada shows that they’re still very much in love, that they both enjoy hockey, and that they will continue to go about their business, unbothered by the Salt Island freakshow. Speaking of, Tom Sykes at the Daily Beast painted the Sussexes as putting on a brave face in the wake of their (LOL) “festive humiliation.” Yes, it was super-humiliating for them to see the palace create a false narrative, then spend 72 hours promoting the false narrative and blaming Harry and Meghan for everything. These people are insane.

Speaking of, Prince Harry has so many lawsuits against British media outlets, it’s sometimes difficult for me to keep track of everything. He’s currently part of a larger group of celebrities suing Associated Newspapers Ltd, aka the Mail, for their long-running phone hacking and blagging schemes. Some of those schemes were outed as part of the Leveson Inquiry in 2011-12, as in, the Leveson Inquiry procured evidence that the Mail was, in fact, hacking and using criminal methods to gain information about royals and celebrities. This is a key part of Harry’s case against the Mail. So obviously, dozens of roadblocks are being put up to stop Harry and the others from using the documentation uncovered in the Leveson Inquiry.

The Duke of Sussex’s lawyers are to write to ministers pleading with them to release leaked files that could support claims he was the victim of phone hacking. Prince Harry and six other celebrities have relied on documents Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), the publishers of the Daily Mail, submitted to the 2012 Leveson Inquiry to try to prove they were targeted by the newspaper’s journalists.

However, Mr Justice Nicklin, who is hearing their case, had ruled that they could not use leaked copies of confidential documents supplied to the now-concluded inquiry unless a “relevant minister” approved them being made public.

The Duke’s legal team had obtained the files, which included ledgers listing “payments to private investigators” and search agencies after they appeared on an online website six years ago. But only Sir Brian Leveson, the retired judge who headed the inquiry into the media, or the minister now responsible for those stored files have the power to release them.

Documents submitted on Tuesday to the High Court in London reveal the Duke’s lawyers are planning to write to the “relevant minister” – understood to be either James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, or Lucy Frazer, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport – to ask for the files to be officially handed to the lawyers.

In their skeleton arguments placed before the preliminary hearing, the claimants’ lawyers say that because Associated Newspapers refused to release the schedule of payments to them officially they would seek a “variation” of Mr Leveson’s original ruling that those ledgers should remain classified. They add that by writing to the “relevant minister” and obtaining the files they could “avoid… the costly amendment procedure” of rewriting legal arguments which omitted any reference to what it claimed the Leveson ledgers show.

[From The Telegraph]

It’s bonkers that the Mail’s whole defense is “we didn’t do it, you can’t prove we did it, you can’t use the documents which prove we did it, maybe we did it but the statute of limitations ran out anyway so legally we didn’t do it.” What’s worse is that the defense is working – I get the impression, over and over, that Harry and David Sherbourne are constantly on the back foot, that they are constantly surprised by the judge being so partial to the Mail’s unhinged arguments.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

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