Damaging allegations that Meghan Markle was a workplace bully have been revived by an unprecedented TV interview by key Prince William loyalist Jason Knauf, just a week before Meghan’s new show is due to drop on Netflix.
The intervention risks being seen as a calculated attempt by a royal family loyalist to damage Meghan’s reinvention as a warm-hearted, jam-making, bee-keeping homemaker.
It will confound Pollyannas who have expressed the hope that William wishes his sister-in-law success in her new career, and serve instead to reinforce the perception that the Sussexes and the Windsors are locked in an intractable feud.
Knauf is a former key palace aide, who first worked for Kate, William and Harry, and then for Meghan and Harry, as communications secretary. However, he subsequently turned into one of Meghan’s most powerful and implacable enemies.
He betrayed Meghan and accused her of bullying and turned on her in a court case she brought (and won) against the Daily Mail. Meghan denied the bullying allegations.
He is openly aligned with the Waleses, having remained a close friend of Prince William. He is a trustee of William’s Earthshot Foundation and was knighted in 2023.
He has now given an extraordinary interview to 60 Minutes Australia in which he suggested he stood by the allegations he made against Meghan.
The timing of the interview just a week before her new show, With Love, Meghan, drops recalls, for some, the timing of the publication of Knauf’s last intervention on the matter of Meghan’s management style.
In 2021, just days before Meghan’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey was due to screen, an email sent by Knauf in 2018, accusing Meghan of having bullied two personal assistants out of their jobs, was published by the London Times.
The leak was widely seen as a pre-emptive strike aimed at tarnishing Meghan’s credibility ahead of the Oprah interview.
Asked about that time in the sit-down with 60 Minutes Australia, Knauf, a New Zealander by birth, said he had “no regrets” and added: “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
While he sought to ostensibly couch his response as a generalized one, Knauf, a seasoned PR and reputation management expert, is unlikely not to have considered that his remarks would be construed as doubling down on his 2018 assessment that Meghan was a manipulative bully.
It is also inconceivable that he wouldn’t have sought William’s permission to give the interview, given that he remains a close friend of William, as the documentary makes clear. They are so close that, as Knauf says, William called him privately to tell him about Kate’s cancer diagnosis.
He said of that call: “It was awful, absolutely awful. It’s the lowest I’ve ever seen him. Within a couple of weeks, if you’re Prince William, you find out that both your wife and your father have cancer. I couldn’t believe it.”
Knauf’s allegations about bullying carry extra weight because of the unprecedented nature of a communications secretary making an on-the-record complaint against their own boss.
Knauf wrote in a 2018 note to Prince William’s private secretary who was his boss in the royal hierachy: “I am very concerned that the duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year. The treatment of X was totally unacceptable.”
He added: “The duchess seems intent on having someone in her sights. She is bullying Y and seeking to undermine her confidence. We have had report after report from people who have witnessed unacceptable behaviour towards Y.”
Meghan dismissed the bullying allegations as an attempt to smear her name.
However the rumors just won’t die.
In September last year, after Meghan’s team orchestrated a feature in Us Weekly claiming she was a great leader, in response to an article in The Hollywood Reporter which described her as a “demon in high heels,” former employees told The Daily Beast she was a “psycho” boss.
They subsequently said they felt “vindicated” by a Vanity Fair report alleging some of Markle’s American staffers needed therapy after working for her.
Responding to the Vanity Fair report, one former employee told The Daily Beast: “I am surprised that people spoke out, but I am not surprised by the content of their allegations. It seems like nothing has changed. There is not really much more to say.”
Another added, “I feel desperately sorry for the people affected, because I have been there, but I also feel vindicated.”
The source said that people claiming Markle is the “world’s greatest boss should be ashamed of themselves.”
They added: “It’s obviously very tempting to work for her when you are being wooed and love-bombed, but people should be in no doubt; she is a nightmare. I would think the atmosphere will be particularly hellish now everything is going to s--t. She doesn’t do disappointment well.”
