Prince Harry Partied and Sent a Friend Request to Journalist He Is Fighting in Court: Report
The Duke of Sussex's alleged social ties to the Daily Mail's editor-at-large have emerged in court—complicating his lawsuit against the very paper she works for.
Details surfacing at the trial into Prince Harry's lawsuit against Associated Newspapers have thrown up an unexpected wrinkle in the Duke of Sussex's case. Among the witness statements entered into evidence is one from Charlotte Griffiths, the paper's editor-at-large—and the woman Harry is, in effect, fighting in court. According to her account, the two were once rather more than strangers.
Griffiths, who was working as a diary reporter at the time, states that in 2011 the Duke sent her a Facebook friend request and handed over his personal number. The acquaintance, it appears, did not remain purely digital. In her witness statement, she describes attending a party at the London flat of mutual friend Arthur Landon in June 2012, a gathering that was already well underway by the time she arrived and over which Harry was presiding in Landon's absence, The Sun reported.
The details are also vividly mentioned. "Arthur hadn't made it home by the time that I arrived but told me Prince Harry was staying at the flat and that the party had already started under Prince Harry's watch," she said. When the music proved too loud for the doorbell to cut through, "Arthur advised me to call and text to be let in." Harry, she states, was the one who obliged.
This is very significant because it is in the middle of a high-stakes legal battle. Harry, now 41, is one of seven prominent claimants pursuing Associated Newspapers over allegations that journalists commissioned private investigators to unlawfully gather information on them. The publisher has denied the claims in unambiguous terms, mounting a defense that points instead to the claimants' own social environments—arguing that their circles were simply, and fatally, "leaky." The emergence of Griffiths's account does little to weaken that line of argument.
The case itself is the third and most consequential chapter in Harry's long war with the British press. He and six other prominent figures, including Elton John and actress Elizabeth Hurley, allege that Associated Newspapers engaged in a "clear, systematic, and sustained use of unlawful information gathering" for two decades, tactics that their legal team says included hacking mobile phone voicemails, tapping landline calls, and "blagging" personal information without the knowledge or consent of those targeted. Harry's own claims center on 14 stories published about him between 2001 and 2013 that he says were built on unlawfully obtained material.
It is a battle with considerable precedent behind it. In 2023, Harry became the first senior British royal in more than a century to give evidence in court when he sued Mirror Group Newspapers—a case in which the publisher issued a formal apology and a judge awarded him around $182,000 in damages. He followed that with a settlement against the publisher of The Sun, which agreed to pay substantial damages and to issue an apology for intruding into the lives of Harry and his late mother, Princess Diana. The Associated Newspapers trial is widely seen as his final and most significant front in that campaign—one his team estimates could cost both sides around $51 million in total legal costs.
