Prince Harry “deliberately destroyed” potential evidence relating to his High Court phone hacking claim against a major UK publisher, it’s been claimed.

News Group Newspapers, publishers of The Sun, is trying to get hold of emails, text messages and WhatsApp messages both sent and received by the Duke of Sussex.

Representatives are also allegedly trying to access two encrypted hard drives. Among the probe into Harry’s communications, 

they also want to see “records of communication” between the Duke and the King’s private secretary Sir Clive Alderton along with Sir Michael Stevens.

Sir Michael is the privy purse treasurer to the King. Correspondence between JR Moehringer and Harry, the ghost-writer of Spare is also being requested, it’s claimed.

On Thursday, an attorney for the publisher of The Sun tabloid Thursday accused Prince Harry of engaging in “shocking” 

and “extraordinary” obfuscation by destroying evidence it was seeking in his lawsuit claiming that the newspaper violated his privacy by unlawfully snooping on him.

Attorney Anthony Hudson said at the High Court that the Duke of Sussex had deliberately destroyed text messages with the ghostwriter who penned his bestselling memoir, Spare.

“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…”

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.

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.”

A lawyer for Prince Harry said News Group Newspapers was engaging in a “classic fishing expedition” by seeking documents they should have sought much sooner for a trial scheduled in January.

His attorney David Sherborne said in court papers: “NGN’s tactical and sluggish approach to disclosure wholly undermines the deliberately sensational assertion that the claimant [Harry] has not properly carried out the disclosure exercise,” his attorney, David Sherborne, said in court papers.

“This is untrue. In fact, the claimant has already made clear that he has conducted extensive searches, going above and beyond his obligations.”

Hudson said Harry had created an “obstacle course” to getting documents from his former lawyer and staff when he was a working member of the royal family.

He said: “If the claimant wanted his documents from his former solicitors’ or from the royal household … He would have got them.”

The hearing is the latest in Harry’s battles over alleged phone hacking and hiring private investigators to use unlawful measures to dig up dirt on him.

He is one of dozens of claimants, which had included actor Hugh Grant, alleging that between 1994 and 2016, News Group journalists violated their privacy through widespread unlawful activity that included intercepting voicemails, tapping phones, bugging cars and using deception to access confidential information.

The litigation grew out of a phone hacking scandal that erupted at NGN’s News of the World in 2011. The judge in the case recently ruled that Harry couldn’t expand his lawsuit to add allegations that Rupert Murdoch, who was executive of the company that included NGN, was part of an effort to conceal and destroy evidence of unlawful activity.

NGN issued an unreserved apology in 2011 to victims of voicemail interception by the News of the World, which closed its doors after the scandal. NGN said it has settled 1,300 claims for its newspapers, though The Sun has never accepted liability.

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Source: Los Angeles Times