Meghan Markle launches bid to keep friends’ identities secret

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Meghan Markle today issued an application for a High Court injunction to stop anyone from naming her five female friends who briefed People magazine about her and a letter sent by the former Suits star to her estranged father Thomas.

The five women, whose sex was previously unknown until the Duchess today revealed it, were named as the sources of a People Magazine article in 2019 in legal papers submitted by Meghan to the court last week, although their identities were not made public.

The article lies at the heart of her privacy and copyright case against the Mail on Sunday because it was the first time the existence of a letter the Duchess had written to her father Thomas was revealed.

The Mail On Sunday claims that revelation and the misleading impression it gave of the letter gave Thomas the right to publish more of the handwritten note in the Mail on Sunday to defend himself after their relationship became hopelessly estranged in the wake of Meghan’s marriage to Harry in May 2018.

But Meghan insists that she had no idea any of her friends had spoken to People magazine until after the fact.

All five of the women now face the prospect of being hauled to the High Court in London next year to testify in the explosive privacy trial. They will be asked to confirm on oath that the Duchess had no prior knowledge that they were going to speak to People. 

Today Meghan applied for an injunction against the publisher of the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline claiming that: ‘Associated Newspapers, the owner of The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, is threatening to publish the names of five women – five private citizens – who made a choice on their own to speak anonymously with a US media outlet more than a year ago, to defend me from the bullying behaviour of Britain’s tabloid media.

‘These five women are not on trial, and nor am I. The publisher of the Mail on Sunday is the one on trial. Each of these women is a private citizen, young mother, and each has a basic right to privacy. These five women are not on trial, and nor am I. The publisher of the Mail on Sunday is the one on trial’.

A spokesman for the Mail on Sunday said today: ‘To set the record straight, The Mail on Sunday had absolutely no intention of publishing the identity of the five friends this weekend. But their evidence is at the heart of the case and we see no reason why their identities should be kept secret. That is why we told the Duchess’s lawyers last week that the question of their confidentiality should be properly considered by the Court’.

The identities of the five friends have never been published but Meghan’s Canadian best friend Jessica Mulroney has been widely reported as one of the women believed to have spoken to People, including by the Daily Telegraph and The Sun in the UK. 

But Ms Markle’s decision to ‘ditch’ Ms Mulroney recently over racially-tinged bullying allegations has increased speculation that the Canadian stylist could turn on the Duchess of Sussex ahead of the High Court battle due next year.

Meghan apparently cut ties with Jessica, who she met while filming Suits in Toronto, after black Canadian blogger Sasha Exeter said Mulroney used her ‘wealth and privilege’ to silence her and then name-dropped her friendship with mixed race Meghan as evidence that she wasn’t racist.

Meghan’s publicists then briefed reporters that the Duchess was ‘mortified’ by her best friend’s behaviour and that she ‘could no longer be associated with her’.

On Monday a source close to Ms Mulroney told The Sun’s Dan Wootton that ‘Meghan has forsaken her most loyal friend just to look woke’, adding: ‘She’s completely distraught and devastated because Meghan has done nothing to stand up for her publicly. Jessica is terrified she will never work again.’

The rift has put huge strain on their friendship at a time when Meghan’s legal battle with the Mail on Sunday over privacy edges towards the so-called trial of the century expected to take place in London next year where the Duchess of Sussex and her father would be expected to give evidence against each other.

Media lawyer Mark Stephens, a partner at London firm Howard Kennedy, told MailOnline that if Jessica Mulroney is one of the group of friends who spoke to People magazine, Ms Markle and her legal team will be worried that she may refuse to give evidence or damage their case because they have now fallen out.

He said: ‘If Ms Mulroney is one of Meghan’s five friends then she will be a critical key witness in the case being advanced to trial. She will have to testify that even though the letter sent to Thomas Markle contained highly personal information she took it upon herself to brief People Magazine without Meghan knowing anything about it. All five will have to confirm that in court – and without it Meghan’s case is holed below the waterline’.

In People’s bombshell February 2019 interview, the five, who were described by the magazine as ‘a special sisterhood’, lavished praise on Meghan.

One of them – identified in court papers by Meghan as ‘Friend A’ – told the world about the letter she had posted to her father in October 2018.

Meghan named her five friends to the High Court in a confidential schedule which was kept secret. In a public document she named them as Friends A to E.

She identified Friend A as the one who had told People that the letter had said: ‘Dad, I’m so heartbroken. I love you. I have one father. Please stop victimising me through the media so we can repair our relationship.’

Meghan claimed this was an ‘unfortunately inaccurate’ portrayal of her letter, stressing numerous times that she had known nothing of her closest friends’ decision to go public.

She disclosed a list of those she had discussed the ‘private’ letter with in the papers lodged with the High Court – two of her friends, Prince Harry, her mother Doria Ragland, the press team at Kensington Palace (KP), and her solicitor.

Her lawyers told the High Court she had told ‘some of her friends’ about the fact she had sent a letter, adding that she had also ‘discussed the contents of the letter with her husband, her mother, Friends A and C, the KP Communications Team and her solicitor’.

Meghan insisted more than a dozen times in last week’s legal document that she had no prior knowledge of her friends’ interview with People.

She added that she was so uninvolved in ‘the process of the People article’ that she only found out about it on the day it was published.