Prince Harry and his visa woes have been in the news a lot over the past year, as the right-wing thinktank The Heritage Foundation has been using suggestions of impropriety to bash the prince and by extension the Biden istration. The controversy centers on whether or not the prince lied about his history of drug taking during his visa application, or whether he didn’t lie and received special treatment by the Biden istration instead.
A court had previously ruled that information regarding Harry’s visa application could be released, in a major blow to the prince, but the documents themselves hadn’t been released to the public. As reported in The Independent, however, a new court ruling dated March 15 requires that the documents be released by this coming Tuesday, i.e., March 18. This is a significant win for the Heritage Foundation, which has spent a lot of time trying to get its case off the ground.
For the Foundation, this whole issue isn’t about whether a famous person lied on a form. It’s using Harry’s answers to attack the previous U.S. government. If Harry lied, the previous government didn’t do its due diligence and let someone into the country without proper vetting; if Harry didn’t lie, the Joe Biden istration offered special treatment to a foreign prince. The Heritage Foundation wins either way.
The situation for Harry is less positive by far. Harry, whose life is now almost entirely settled within the U.S., is unlikely to want to pack up and leave for pastures new. Not when his children attend U.S. schools, not when his wife has significant business interests in the country, and not when it’s unclear exactly where he could go. The various Commonwealth realms have problems similar to the U.K. when it comes to hosting an errant prince and his family, and the Sussexes have no real cultural attachments to other parts of the world.
The situation is certainly not helped by Donald Trump, who reportedly intensely dislikes the Sussexes — with Meghan receiving the brunt of his ill favor. Trump has been quite clear that he has no fond feelings towards either Sussex, stating variously that he will be of no help to Harry over this visa issue. Despite claiming at times that he will “leave him alone,” sources close to the U.S. president have indicated that if Harry is found to have lied, Trump is prepared to prosecute.
All of this adds up to one massive headache for the duke. Harry has been tight-lipped over this issue, allowing the saga to play out in the courts without comment. At this point, the only people who know whether he lied on the application are Harry and a handful of officials who’ve had access to the documents.
When the documents are released on Tuesday and if it’s discovered that the Royal family’s estranged prince lied… well, that’s going to start a cascade of events which could end in his prosecution, and there isn’t much he can do to protest. If he lied, he broke the law — in that scenario his fate is in Trump’s hands.
Published: Mar 16, 2025 10:52 am