Prince Harry received some good news yesterday after US officials rejected a request to make his visa file public after questions were raised over whether he lied on the document about his past drug use. But the Conservative thinktank who brought the case before a judge has lashed out at the Department of Homeland Security’s refusal to release the Duke’s immigration files. The organisations lawyer said they would continue to fight the outcome.
Heritage Foundation went to court last week to try and force the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to speed up its response to the Freedom of Information Act request about the Duke of Sussex’s private immigration documents.
They claim it is in the public interest to know if Harry correctly detailed his past drug use, after he admitted to using cocaine, marijuana and magic mushrooms in his memoir Spare.
US visa applications can be denied over drug taking, although it is not a hard-and-fast rule.
Judge Carl Nichols refused to issue an injunction and gave the US Government one week to respond to the thinktank on whether it would release the files.
Yesterday, the DHS rejected the demands. Its senior director Jimmy Wolfrey wrote in a letter: “To the extent records exist, this office does not find a public interest in disclosure sufficient to override the subject’s privacy interests.”
It prompted an angry response from the Heritage Foundation, with the group’s lawyer Samual Dewey telling the New York Post it “shows an appalling lack of transparency by the Biden Administration”.
“The Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to stonewall the Heritage Foundation’s Freedom of Information request are unacceptable, and we will be contesting their position,” he added.
“We expected to have to fight every step of this case in federal court and will continue to press for transparency and accountability for the American people.”
Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, also hit out at the decision.
He said: “This argument makes no sense, but is not surprising coming from the zero-transparency Biden Administration.”
“The Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to stonewall the Heritage Foundation’s Freedom of Information request are unacceptable, and we will be contesting their position.”
Mike Howell, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to DHS – citing that this was to ensure that American laws are “being applied fairly”.
The thinktank also requested to check to see if Harry had admitted to any drug taking within the three years before Spare was released.
