It’s fun and interesting to read through the coverage of Prince Harry’s incredible legal victory. There was a rush to call it a “partial victory,” but from where I’m sitting, the victory is substantial. A judge ruled in Harry’s favor, confirming that Harry was illegally hacked by the Mirror when he was young. While Harry only needed to “prove” one incident of hacking to win, Judge Fancourt found 15 instances (out of 33) where hacking was used in reporting about Harry. Judge Fancourt went even further than that, saying that the Mirror carried out “very extensive and habitual unlawful information gathering,” including widespread hacking which was used “very substantially.” The Mirror’s criminal behavior was “an integral part of the system.” Not only that, but Judge Fancourt name-checked Piers Morgan AND said that Omid Scobie was a credible witness.
In a significant part of the judgment, Mr Justice Fancourt lists times when Piers Morgan was said to have been aware of phone hacking.
Referring to evidence given by royal author Omid Scobie, he said that he found the evidence of Morgan’s involvement to be credible and it had not been countered by the Mirror Group.
Scobie, who has been at the centre of recent controversy around the naming of the ‘racist’ royals, had recalled an incident when he was a student intern at the newspaper group, working on its “3am Girls” entertainment desk.
In 2002, he told the court he had witnessed Morgan, the then-editor of the Mirror, discuss an article about Kylie Minogue and that he had asked how confident the journalist was about the story. He had been informed by the journalist that the source had been a voicemail, Scobie claimed.
Mr Justice Fancourt said that recollection was supported by evidence of an invoice from a private investigator related to obtaining Minogue’s mobile phone number and that of her then partner, James Gooding.
[From The Independent]
Let’s underline this point – Harry’s lawyers argued that Piers Morgan, then the editor of the Mirror, knew about the extensive use of phone hacking. Omid Scobie testified that Piers openly discussed hacking Kylie Minogue’s voicemails. And Judge Fancourt said that Harry proved that part of the case, that Piers knew and that Scobie’s testimony was credible. Meanwhile, Piers refused to testify, preferring to lie his ass off in print, claiming that he had no idea any of this was happening and Harry is the liar. Harry has every right to call on the Met Police to investigate this criminal behavior and I hope they do.
A judge just found that he knew of these illegal phone hackings at the time of making this statement. pic.twitter.com/uYEXmF0o5U
— D (@dilemmv) December 15, 2023
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Piers’ social media.
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