Donald Trump has once again hinted that, under a second Trump administration, Prince Harry could be kicked out of the United States if he is found to have lied on paperwork about his drug use.
Trump told Nigel Farage in a GB News interview to be broadcast Tuesday, when asked what he would do if allegations that Harry may have lied on his visa forms proved accurate: “We’ll have to see if they know something about the drugs, and if he lied they’ll have to take appropriate action.”
Farage asked if “appropriate action” could mean “not staying in America,” to which Trump replied, according to a report on the outlet’s website, “Oh I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me. You just have to tell me. You would have thought they would have known this a long time ago.”
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The interview is the latest twist in a legal case that increasingly looks like it could become a real problem for Harry.
An immigration lawyer recently told The Daily Beast that Harry could be vulnerable to a politically motivated attack on his residential status, saying: “Department of State decisions are discretionary and very susceptible to political influence. His visa could be canceled. He could be denied entry upon return to the U.S. from foreign travel for inadmissibility due to prior drug usage, despite an unexpired visa in his passport. There are many scenarios where political influence could impact Harry’s ability to re-enter the U.S.”
Harry’s woes stem from legal action being brought by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, publisher of right-wing blogosphere favorite The Daily Signal, which is suing the Biden administration, demanding to look at the paperwork Harry submitted when he moved to the U.S.
Individuals applying for permission to visit, live, or work in the country are required to answer a question asking; “Are you or have you ever been a drug abuser or addict?”
The foundation’s Nile Gardiner has argued, “Harry seems to have received special treatment: the Department of Homeland Security looked the other way if the prince answered truthfully, or it looked the other way if the prince lied on his visa application. Either action would be wrong.”
The Department of Homeland Security has resisted handing over the documents, saying such data is private, but in a blow for the government, presiding Judge Carl J. Nichols of the Federal District Court in Washington has asked to see the paperwork himself before making a decision.
Trump reopened his feud with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle last month, telling Britain’s Daily Express newspaper at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month that if he wins a second term, Harry will be “on his own.”
Trump said, “I wouldn’t protect him. He betrayed the queen. That’s unforgivable. He would be on his own if it was down to me.”
The feud dates to a 2016 Comedy Central panel show in which Meghan, then an actress and not linked to Harry, expressed her contempt for Trump, labeling him “misogynistic” and “divisive,” and joking that she might move to Canada if Trump was elected president.
Trump later famously referred to her comment as “nasty” ahead of his state visit to the U.K. in June 2019, by which time he was president and Meghan had married Harry.
In 2022, Trump told fellow Meghan critic Piers Morgan: “Harry is whipped like no person I think I’ve ever seen.” He predicted the couple would divorce, saying, “It’ll end, and it’ll end bad… I want to know what’s going to happen when Harry decides he’s had enough of being bossed around… Or maybe when she decides that she likes some other guy better. I want to know what’s going to happen when it ends, OK?”
Biden administration lawyers have come up with increasingly desperate arguments to try and brush off the Heritage Foundation’s request. At a February court date, administration lawyers argued that Harry may have made up claims of drug use in his memoir to “sell books.”
The Heritage Foundation called that a “ridiculous argument,” saying, “He has never denied anything in his own book... including the extensive widespread drug use.”
British celebrity Nigella Lawson was famously denied entry to the U.S. over admissions of drug use in 2013.
