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Meghan Markle asked palace aides to help her write 'private' letter to dad accusing him of lying, court documents claim

The newspaper's attorneys told the High Court that the letter which Meghan claims as 'personal' was in fact drafted with the help of palace officials
UPDATED NOV 18, 2020
(Getty Images)
(Getty Images)

Meghan's private letter to her father, Thomas Markle, was reportedly written with assistance from the Kensington Palace press officer, the High Court was told. The revelation comes amidst the Duchess of Sussex's lawsuit against The Mail on Sunday for publishing extracts from that letter, which she claims breached her privacy. The former actress has also claimed that the outlet infringed her copyright in the handwritten letter to her father. 

The newspaper's attorneys, however, told the court on Monday, November 17, that the letter which Meghan claims as "personal" was in fact drafted with the help of palace officials. The outlet's legal representatives, in their court filings, said that Jason Knauf, former Communications Secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, "and/or others in the Kensington Palace communications team contributed to the writing of the letter," adding that the letter was not Meghan's "own intellectual creation."

The court filings also revealed that Meghan had recently amended her original court claim to reword a sentence that said she "wrote" a private and confidential letter to her father. The sentence now reads that she "created" the note "using her own intellectual creativity." The Duchess had sued The Mail on Sunday, the Daily Mail's sister paper, in a high-stakes privacy battle for publishing excerpts from the particular letter. The former actress' friends had previously claimed that the note was an attempt to heal relation with her father. However, the outlet has denied the assertions, claiming that the note was aimed at "admonishing" her father.

(Getty Images)

The Duchess' lawyer told the High Court that she had produced an early draft of the letter on her iPhone's 'Notes' app before writing the final version by hand. "The [duchess] created the letter over a period of several weeks in August 2018 on the Notes application in her iPhone," Meghan's attorneys said, adding that she then copied the draft from her iPhone "by hand, making a number of minor modifications, so as to create the letter."

If the trial proceeds, the Duchess and her estranged 76-year-old father would face each other in the High Court nearly a year later. The trial, which was originally scheduled to begin on January 11, was postponed after Meghan won a nine-month delay for a "confidential" reason. Meanwhile, her father had vowed to fly to London to give evidence against her. However, he has said that he wants to be present in court sooner because he is in ill health and fears that he "could die tomorrow."

The Mail on Sunday has defended the case, arguing that Thomas Markle had asked for the extracts from the letter to be published in an attempt to set records straight. The move was made a few days after the Duchess' friends had revealed the existence of the letter in an anonymous interview with People, and had mischaracterized it as a "loving" letter. The Duchess, however, has consistently denied being aware of her five best friends scheduling an interview about the letter with the People magazine. The Mail on Sunday has reportedly maintained that the Duchess wrote the letter knowing that it could possibly be made public.

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