Prince William will “never trust Harry again,” a friend has told The Daily Beast, after Prince Harry revealed details of a “very large” phone hacking settlement William got from News Group Newspapers (NGN), and accused his brother of being party to a secret deal made by his family with his media tormentors.
Harry made the revelation that William had got the secret payout, said to be in excess of $1million, in a witness statement supporting his own legal action against the Murdoch family-owned publisher of U.K. papers the Sun and The Times for phone hacking.
A friend of Prince William’s told The Daily Beast: “Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. This is scorched earth stuff from Harry. By revealing these secrets, he is burning everything to the ground. He is making it very clear that he considers his relationship with William is over.”
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Asked how William was reacting to Harry’s statement, of which he had no foreknowledge or warning, the friend said: “William will never trust Harry again. How could he? The truth is William absolutely hates Harry now and will never forgive him for the damage he has done to the family. The brothers were so close when they were younger that it is just incredible to those of us who knew them back then that they have reached a stage where Harry is revealing his brother’s confidential legal settlements.”
The Daily Beast understands that Prince William, and indeed the wider royal family, had no idea what was in Harry’s witness statement until the document was unsealed at the High Court.
A friend of King Charles’ told The Daily Beast that his default position will always be to try and keep the door open to his younger son, despite the fact that he believes his actions to be misguided. “Charles has been through an enormous amount himself, and he does have a deep sympathy for Harry, who he adores,” the friend said.
While Charles seems determined to continue to ignore the provocations of Harry, William appears to have had enough, and the astonishingly inflammatory paragraph in Harry’s witness statement looks like it could be the final straw.
In the paragraph, Harry wrote: “My brother appeared to know an awful lot more than I did on the subject of phone hacking although he did not tell me if that was the case. However, NGN still settled his claim for a huge sum of money in 2020 without subjecting him to a similar strike out application, without any of the public being told, and seemingly with some favorable deal in return for him going ‘quietly’ so to speak. This goes to prove the existence of this secret agreement between the institution and senior executives at NGN—if it wasn’t in place then why on earth did William wait until 2019 to bring his claim in circumstances where our two private secretaries brought and settled claims back in 2012, and where he knew far more about the matter back then than I did, and also why didn’t NGN test its limitation argument against him? This is precisely the reason why I didn’t bring a phone hacking claim against NGN until 2019—if I’d been allowed to put in a claim earlier and hold NGN properly to account then of course I would have, especially given my antipathy towards NGN and the tabloid press in general, as described above.”
Prince Harry and Meghan, left, Duchess of Sussex, Prince William, second right, and Kate, Princess of Wales leave Westminster Hall in London, Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022.
Nariman El-Mofty/Pool via REUTERSThe alleged deal, which was approved by the late queen following pressure from Charles, Harry said—despite her initial reservations—saw the royals agree to a request by NGN not to bring their own cases until other litigation had been settled. The suggestion is that NGN hoped to thereby avoid implicating the Sun in the hacking scandal, apportioning all claims to the shuttered News of the World. NGN denies any illegality took place at the Sun.
Some commentators have suggested that William’s settlement with NGN was fairly standard practice, and certainly speaking to William’s friends one gets the feeling that many of them believe Harry has revealed the settlement, at least partly, out of spite aimed at his brother.
But media lawyer Mark Stephens, a partner at leading law firm Howard Kennedy, told The Daily Beast that Harry’s decision to reveal his brother’s settlement, far from being an act of mere vindictiveness, made good legal sense.
“NGN is essentially arguing that Harry is out of time, but Harry is making the argument that he delayed proceedings because of the secret deal, and the payment to his brother is part of the evidence that such a deal existed.
“The payment is important. It is a crucial piece of the picture which Harry and his lawyers are building which is that William and the other royals were cozying up to Murdoch while Harry was kept out of the loop because they suspected he would see it see it as his duty to fight.”
Outcomes of legal arguments are notoriously hard to predict, but it seems highly possible Harry could get his day in court. If the case goes ahead, it is scheduled to take place in January 2024.
Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace declined to comment.
