‘Inflammatory allegations’: Drugs case against Prince Harry. All you need to know

Prince Harry’s US entry and exit records are private and publishing them through a case about his drug use would be “clearly unwarranted,” officials said in a filing. The Duke of Sussex talked about taking drugs, including cocaine, cannabis, magic mushrooms and ayahuasca, in his memoir ‘Spare’ which was released in January 2023. The Heritage Foundation argued that Prince Harry should have disclosed his experiences in his US visa application.

The organisation wants the US Department of Homeland Security to publish the application to allow scrutiny over whether Prince Harry lied or was given easy access to the visa. The DHS accused the foundation of drafting “six pages of inflammatory allegations” targeting US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) while the former said that DHS criticisms of its own conduct were “outrageous”.

A letter from CBP to Heritage read, “We find that you have not provided sufficient public interest to outweigh the Duke of Sussex’s right to privacy concerning his entry and exit records.”

“Without an individual’s consent or an overriding public interest, providing the Duke’s entry and exit records would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” Newsweek reported the letter as reading.

“A ‘bare suspicion’ of agency misconduct is insufficient. A FOIA requester must produce evidence that would warrant a belief by a reasonable person that alleged Government impropriety might have occurred. An allegation of ‘public interest’ that is nothing more than a general public curiosity in the subject matter of requested records is legally insufficient,” it added.

[DHS] statements that [the foundation’s] position is ‘inflammatory allegations’ is simply an effort to distract from the record. All [the foundation] have done is recount CBP’s own conduct,” it continued.