Meghan denies wanting letter to dad to go public but knew it might be leaked

Article content

Meghan Markle has denied wanting a letter she wrote to her father, Thomas Markle, to be leaked — but admitted there was always a possibility he would leak it anyway.

The Duchess of Sussex wrote a 20-page witness statement as part of her litigation against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), publisher of The Mail on Sunday newspaper, which republished parts of a private letter Meghan sent to her dad in August 2018.

Meghan didn’t think Thomas would leak the note but was prepared for the possibility, writing, “To be clear, I did not want any of it to be published, and wanted to ensure that the risk of it being manipulated or misleadingly edited was minimised, were it to be exploited.”

She claimed she sent the letter in hopes that the “public attacks” on her, her husband and the Royal Family would stop, according to the Daily Mail.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

Try refreshing your browser, or
tap here to see other videos from our team.

Play Video

“Senior members of the family and their advisers expressed their concern over the public attacks, and expressed their desire to have them stopped,” her statement read.

“I was especially sensitive to this as I had very recently married into the family and was eager to please them.”

In her written statement, the former Suits star insisted she did not think her estranged father would leak her letter because he would not come off well.

“I did not think that my father would sell or leak the letter, primarily because it would not put him in a good light.”

She continued: “I had not heard from him since the week leading up to our wedding, but it seemed incredibly unlikely that he would disclose the contents because they contained unpalatable truths and would thereby negate the falsehoods the media had attributed to him.”

Meghan added: “The main purpose of the letter was to encourage my father to stop talking to the press.”

The Court of Appeal is being urged to overturn the summary judgment and send the case to a full trial, at which the Duchess would be expected to be cross-examined, but that won’t be determined for some time.