Meghan admits she ‘misled’ court
Duchess apologises for ‘unintentionally’ not mentioning aide’s contact with authors
THE Duchess of Sussex has apologised for misleading a court over whether she had authorised aides to brief the authors of a biography about her.
The Duchess said she “had not remembered” exchanges in which she was told about a two-hour meeting between her communications secretary and the writers of Finding Freedom.
Yesterday she apologised to the Court of Appeal after a series of emails were disclosed which showed that the Duchess was aware of the meeting between Jason Knauf and the authors.
The emails showed that the Duchess had provided briefing notes for Mr Knauf before the meeting with Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.
Previously the Duchess had told the court via her lawyers, Schillings, that she did not know whether her communications team had given information to the writers. However, in a witness statement presented yesterday, she said she had forgotten about Mr Knauf ’s meeting with the authors and the emails telling her about it. Saying she had “absolutely no wish or intention to mislead the defendant or the court”, the Duchess conceded Mr Knauf had offered information “with my knowledge”.
The emails emerged in a hearing in which the publishers of The Mail on Sunday, Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), are trying to overturn a High Court ruling that their publication of extracts from a letter the Duchess wrote to her father were unlawful, breaching her privacy, copyright and data protection.
Experts in privacy law said yesterday that if the Appeal Court judges decided the Duchess’s admission of misleading the court was central to the case, they could rescind the previous decision by Mr Justice Warby and order a new hearing with a different judge. The Duchess is not likely to be accused of perjury, as judges are reluctant to accuse witnesses of lying unless they have done so in person under cross-examination.
The emails were submitted as part of a witness statement provided by Mr Knauf, who left his job as press secretary to the Cambridges and the Sussexes in March 2019 and is now chief executive of the Cambridges’ Royal Foundation. ANL is seeking to use Mr Knauf ’s evidence to show the Duchess had no automatic right of privacy over her letter, claiming she had collaborated in sharing details of her life with biographers.
In a statement dated Nov 17 2020, the Duchess’s lawyers told the court: “The claimant [Meghan] does not know if, and to what extent, the communications team were involved in providing information for the book, but the communications team did not contact the claimant for clarification of any matters relating to the book.”
Mr Knauf ’s statement confirmed the Duke and Duchess both “authorised specific co-operation in writing” in December 2018. In her own statement, the Duchess said: “In the light of the information and documents that Mr Knauf has provided, I accept that Mr Knauf did provide some information to the authors for the book and that he did so with my knowledge. The extent of the information he shared is unknown to me.” She added that when she approved her lawyer’s previous statement, “I did not have the benefit of seeing these emails and I apologise to the court for the fact that I had not remembered these exchanges at the time.
“I had absolutely no wish or intention to mislead the defendant or the court.”
The hearing continues today.
THE Duchess of Sussex deliberately addressed her estranged father as “Daddy” in a handwritten letter, believing it would “pull at the heartstrings” in the event it was leaked, the Court of Appeal has heard.
The 40-year-old, writing in text messages to her then-communications secretary, said she had “obviously” written the letter “with the understanding that it could be leaked”, being “meticulous” in her choice of words.
If Thomas Markle, her father, leaked it, she said, “at least the world will know the truth”, adding they were words she could “never voice publicly” herself.
The Duchess’s texts were yesterday read aloud in the Court of Appeal, as The Mail on Sunday argues the privacy, copyright and data protection case surrounding the letter sent by Meghan to her father should be heard at trial.
Jason Knauf, a former senior Kensington Palace aide, provided a witness statement which the newspaper publisher argued proved the Duchess knew the letter was likely to be published.
He told the court that the Duchess had “explored options for written communication that might convince him to stop giving interviews, but that could also set the record straight if he gave them to the media”.
In a text message read out in court, dated Aug 22 2018, the Duchess asked Mr Knauf to read her letter, saying: “Obviously everything I’ve drafted is with the understanding that it could be leaked, so I have been meticulous in my word choice. But please let me know if anything stands out for you as a liability.”
A second message, discussing how to address Mr Markle, read: “Given I’ve only ever called him Daddy, it may make sense to open as such despite him being less than paternal. And in the unfortunate event that it is leaked, it would pull at the heartstrings.”
The Duchess went on to say the letter was written “in the spirit of facts without seeming orchestrated or litigious”, adding it was “simply an appeal for peace and a reminder of what’s actually happened”. “Honestly Jason, I feel fantastic,” the Duchess told her adviser. “Cathartic and real and honest and factual. If he leaks it, that’s on his conscious [sic] but at least the world will know the truth. Words I could never voice publicly.”
Of the thought she put into the letter, the Duchess said: “Trust me, toiled over every detail of the letter which could be manipulated.”
Mr Knauf ’s statement said the Duchess made one small amendment to the letter on his advice, after he suggested she make mention of her father’s health.
The Duchess had wanted to write a letter rather than send an email or text so that it could not be forwarded or cut and pasted to only share one small portion. The pages were also numbered carefully so it could not be read in part.
“She also deliberately ended each page part way through a sentence so that no page could be falsely presented as the end of the letter,” he said.
The Duchess sent the letter to her Los Angeles-based business manager who then forwarded it by Fedex to Mr Markle
‘She ended each page part way through a sentence so that no page could be falsely presented as the end’
at his address in Mexico, giving a copy to her American attorney.
In her own witness statement provided to the court, the Duchess insisted she did not think the letter was “likely” to be leaked but “merely recognised that this was a possibility given the extraordinary level of media attention and unusual lens we were all under”.
“The proposition that saying that I recognised that it was possible that my father would leak the letter (albeit unlikely) is the same as saying that I thought it likely that he would do so is, I would suggest, absurd,” she said.
The Duchess said the text exchange showed she went to “considerable lengths to ensure that the letter only went to my father”, and chose to write rather than email fearing Mr Markle’s communications had been compromised.
While members of the Royal family suggested she fly out to see her father in person, she disclosed, she believed it would be impossible to reach him privately without risking bringing “yet more embarrassment” on her in-laws.
Saying “senior members of the family and their advisers expressed their concern over the public attacks” on the Royal family from Mr Markle in interviews, wanting them “stopped”, the Duchess added: “I was especially sensitive to this as I had very recently married into the family and was eager to please them.” In August 2018, she said she had spoken to two senior members of the Royal family who agreed she would write a letter.
The Duchess also disclosed other text messages from Mr Knauf in which he praised her “strong and clear letter – with just the right amount of emotion”.
Jenny Afia, from the Duchess’s legal team at Schillings, said it was “obvious, and cannot seriously be disputed” that taking precautions against a letter potentially being leaked is a “materially different proposition” to intending to make it public.
“I did not think that my father would sell or leak the letter, primarily because it would not put him in a good light,” the Duchess said.