Joe Biden’s “arrogant” ambassador to the United Kingdom could be “protecting” Prince Harry from deportation, a bombshell new legal filing claims.
Conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, is currently suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for access to the royal’s visa documents to determine whether he made false statements about prior drug use.
Harry has admitted to experimenting with cocaine, cannabis, and psychedelic mushrooms — behavior he would have been required to disclose on application forms filed before he relocated to the United States in 2020.
The government warns immigrants that making misleading or false claims on government paperwork is grounds for deportation.
The Heritage Foundation is seeking the release of Harry’s documents, saying they are in the public interest.
Lawyers for the DHS have previously declared that releasing the paperwork would be “an unwarranted invasion of Prince Harry’s privacy.”
On Mar. 25, however, Jane Hartley, the US ambassador to the United Kingdom, told Sky News that Harry would not be booted from the country — even if he made a false declaration on his docs.
“It’s not gonna happen in the Biden administration,” she declared.
That remark prompted a new 100-page filing from The Heritage Foundation, accusing Hartley of protecting the prince, before again asserting that the visa application be made public.
“Hartley spoke directly not only to the Duke of Sussex’s current immigration status, but HRH’s [Harry’s] future immigration status as well,” the filing reads.
Nile Gardiner, Director of The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, claimed that Hartley’s “arrogant remarks on Prince Harry are an extraordinary intervention by a senior US diplomat on an ongoing federal court case.”
“The Biden Administration has gone to great lengths to protect Prince Harry, and has even ruled out the possible deportation of the Duke of Sussex if he lied on his US immigration application and violated US immigration law,” Gardiner added, according to the Daily Mail.
District Judge Carl Nichols is currently presiding over the case, and recently requested to see Harry’s visa docs for himself to determine whether DHS was right to argue they are exempt from release.
Hartley’s comments come after Donald Trump told British TV that he could boot the prince from the country if he regains the presidency in November.
“We’ll have to see if they know something about the drugs, and if he lied they’ll have to take appropriate action,” Trump declared about the DHS.
Pressure on the US government to release the Duke of Sussex’s visa records has intensified after campaigners seized on comments made by the American ambassador to London that Harry would not be deported while Joe Biden was president.
The conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington DC, which has gone to court to seek the release of the file, has submitted the remarks made by Jane Hartley as part of their case.
The group has been pushing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to open the dossier on Prince Harry under America’s Freedom of Information laws.
After he admitted taking cocaine in his book Spare, he faced questions over how he had been able to move to the US, where admitting drug use can block a visa application.
Asked about the current position regarding the possibility of the Prince being deported in an interview on Sky News on March 25, Ms Hartley replied “Well it’s not going to happen in the Biden administration.”
Her remarks were described as “extraordinary“ by the Heritage Foundation.
In its court filing, the foundation maintained the DHS had said none of the information could be released “without acknowledging what Prince Harry’s immigration status is or tipping our hand as to what it is.”
Public admission
However, the foundation said, Ms Hartley had spoken publicly about some of the information which it wanted to make public.
“Ambassador Hartley categorically stated that the Duke of Sussex will not be deported by the Biden Administration.
“Thus, the Executive Branch has now categorically stated that, regardless of future circumstances, they will decline to deport the Duke of Sussex – even in the most extreme of cases.”
Her remarks, it added, “dramatically enhance the already compelling public interest in disclosure.”
By speaking publicly. Ms Hartley had effectively repudiated the Biden administration’s case for refusing to release the information.
“Ambassador Hartley’s statement cannot be dismissed as uninformed or idle polite speculation or conversational puffery,” it added.
She was speaking in her official capacity in the interview.
“Ambassador Hartley knew full well that the question had media and political salience, and yet she still spoke directly to the issues being litigated in this case by answering the question,” it said.
So far the Biden administration has refused to make the Duke’s application public.
