IF HE’S CALLED, HE WILL COME
Meghan’s sister says their father is ready to take the stand
‘Legitimate public interest’
THOMAS Markle is ready to testify against his daughter Meghan in court, his elder daughter said yesterday.
Meghan’s half-sister Samantha Markle said her father would enter the witness box if he was called to give evidence, telling the BBC: ‘If he is called, he will come.’
Legal documents filed as part of a British High Court case revealed that Mr Markle, 75, was left ‘deeply hurt’ by a message sent by his daughter and Prince Harry in the run-up to their wedding in 2018.
That message and a string of others will form part of a legal battle between Meghan and The Mail on Sunday, after the newspaper published extracts from a letter she sent to her father.
Meghan, 38, has accused the newspaper of breaching her privacy, her data protection rights and her copyright.
Samantha Markle, Mr Markle’s daughter from his first marriage, has previously been highly critical of her half-sister, calling her ‘inhumane’ and a ‘social climber’.
Last week the 55-year-old said the couple’s decision to step back as senior members of the royal family was a ‘slap in the face’.
Meghan launched her legal action last year, and the Mail on Sunday’s formal response and denial of her claims were lodged at the High Court earlier this week.
If it goes to a full hearing, the case has been heralded as the ‘trial of the century’ by commentators, because of the prospect of the estranged father and daughter giving evidence against each other.
They could both be crossexamined by lawyers about their relationship with each other and with Harry, and about allegations that they each sought to manipulate the media.
The case centres on the letter Meghan wrote to her father in August 2018 – three months after her wedding. Lawyers for the newspaper said she had effectively sanctioned five unnamed friends to brief US magazine People that the letter was a ‘loving’ attempt to heal a rift with Mr Markle.
They allege she wrote the letter knowing it was likely to end up in the public domain.
They said the magazine article had effectively suggested that Mr Markle had lied about his daughter and was to blame for their estrangement, and for missing her wedding. And they said that Meghan had made no apparent complaint about the magazine article, either about it being inaccurate or containing private information published without her consent.
But she launched legal action when Mr Markle gave the full text of the letter to the Mail on himself and his daughter including the contents of the letter.
The newspaper argues that there was ‘a huge and legitimate public interest in the royal family’, which extended to its public conduct and to its personal and family relationships.