It could also be diplomatically embarrassing for the King and risk causing a headache for the Government
In courtroom 17 of Washington DC’s imposing E Barrett Prettyman building, Prince Harry’s future and transatlantic diplomatic relations could be on the line on Wednesday.
If the court case reveals that the Duke of Sussex was not honest about his past drug use when applying for his US visa,
the consequences could stretch far beyond any personal embarrassment, causing further headache for the Royal Family but also Downing Street.
Judge Carl J Nichols has summoned lawyers for the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the Department of Homeland Security to the US district court in the federal capital for the first hearing during Donald Trump’s second term as president of a lawsuit in which the conservative think tank is seeking the Duke’s immigration records.
Trump has said he will not intervene to help Harry if the records are made public and show, as the foundation suspects, that Harry did not tell the truth about his history of drug misuse. It might have prevented him getting a visa to stay in the US with his American wife, Meghan, in March 2020 after they left Britain and then moved on from a Canadian bolthole.
As far-fetched as it sounds, in theory it could lead to Harry being deported from the US, if the judge is persuaded by the foundation to overturn his earlier decision in September last year that Harry’s documents should remain private and they show the fifth-in-line to the throne lied about his previous use of drugs such as cocaine, cannabis, magic mushrooms and ayahuasca, as recorded in his memoir Spare.
It remains quite a big if but the prospect of Harry being deported, while undoubtedly the cause of some schadenfreude among courtiers who claim their lives were made a misery by him and Meghan before they left these shores five years ago, is a potential diplomatic embarrassment for the King and the Royal Family.
It risks causing such awkwardness that it damages the longstanding friendship between the 76-year-old monarch and Trump, 78, and possibly along with it, Sir Keir Starmer’s hopes of using the US president’s admiration for the monarchy as a way of bolstering the special relationship and perhaps avoiding a trade war.