Last week, we heard the completely unsurprising news that the Heritage Foundation is still pursuing the release of Prince Harry’s immigration/visa records. Last September, a federal judge said that Harry’s records would not be made public, that Harry has a right to privacy and that the records will be sealed. Now that Donald Trump is back in office, Heritage wants the issue relitigated. There are two bonkers elements to this: one, Harry most likely applied for and received a visa in 2020, during Trump’s first term; two, Trump has installed that puppy-murdering psycho Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security and Noem could literally just release the records herself if Trump ordered her to. Anyway, the British press is damp with anticipation.
A judge will decide whether to release the Duke of Sussex’s US visa records on Wednesday, at the first court hearing since the row was reignited by the election of Donald Trump. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, sued the Department of Homeland Security demanding access to Prince Harry’s visa documents to determine whether he made false statements about his past drug use.
Harry, 40, admitted in his 2023 memoir, Spare, that he experimented with cocaine, cannabis and psychedelic substances, which he would have been required to disclose on application forms filed before he relocated to California with his wife, Meghan, in 2020.
The case was dismissed by a judge in Washington in September, but with Trump back in office the think tank decided to revive the lawsuit, hoping that the new political climate will work in its favour.
Judge Carl Nichols agreed to reopen the case and ordered lawyers for all parties to appear in court on at 2pm on Wednesday. It will be the first test of whether the new president will force through a change of stance at the department in charge of immigration, which has so far refused to hand over the duke’s records. Trump has the power to order federal agencies to release documents.
Nile Gardiner, director of the think tank’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, said that Trump’s election victory was “game-changing” because Harry would no longer be “shielded” from scrutiny by Joe Biden’s government. He has urged the Republican president to intervene in the case, claiming the documents would show the duke either provided false information on his forms or received preferential treatment.
“Donald Trump is ushering in a new era of strict border control enforcement and Prince Harry should be held fully to account as he has admitted to extensive illegal drug use,” Gardiner said. “My firm expectation is that action will be taken.”
The thing I want people to understand is that the rules and laws don’t matter. They haven’t mattered since January 20th. We’re in the great unknown here – Trump could literally do anything, from ordering the release of Harry’s visa records himself, to letting this play out in court, to sending ICE agents to Montecito. I truly don’t know what will happen, but all I’ll say is that the Biden-era DHS and a federal judge already looked through Harry’s records and they saw nothing of note and nothing which would raise any red flags. Meaning, another possibility could play out: Harry’s records are released and there’s nothing questionable in them, and the Trump administration makes no move to deport Harry.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.
