*Meghan Markle’s legal battle with a British newspaper is getting uglier.
The Duchess of Sussex has moved to stop the publication of personal details of five friends who spoke out in her defense to PEOPLE magazine last year.
We previously reported… new court documents from Markle’s legal battle with The Mail on Sunday also reveal the lack of protection she received from the palace during her pregnancy.
According to Entertainment Tonight, the Duchess allegedly felt “unprotected by the institution” when it came to defending her against the racist the British press.
Meanwhile, the Royal Family fiercely protects pedophile Prince Andrew and yet prohibited Meghan from speaking out against the lies and misinformation printed about her.
Markle’s lawsuit centers on the handwritten letter she sent to her estranged father, of which excerpts were shared by The Mail on Sunday.
The court documents also refer to the People magazine report that included anonymous interviews with several of Markle’s friends who spoke against claims made in Mail on Sunday’s report.
The Duchess of Sussex’s legal team is now attempting to stop the newspaper from publicly identifying these sources.
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In Markle’s witness statement filed at the High Court in London, she says, “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 U.S. media outlet more than a year ago, to defend me from the bullying behavior 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. It is this publisher that acted unlawfully and is attempting to evade accountability; to create a circus and distract from the point of this case—that the Mail on Sunday unlawfully published my private letter.
“Each of these women is a private citizen, young mother, and each has a basic right to privacy. Both the Mail on Sunday and the court system have their names on a confidential schedule, but for the Mail on Sunday to expose them in the public domain for no reason other than clickbait and commercial gain is vicious and poses a threat to their emotional and mental wellbeing.
“The Mail on Sunday is playing a media game with real lives.
“I respectfully ask the court to treat this legal matter with the sensitivity it deserves, and to prevent the publisher of the Mail on Sunday from breaking precedent and abusing the legal process by identifying these anonymous individuals – a privilege that these newspapers in fact rely upon to protect their own unnamed sources.”
A Mail on Sunday spokesman issued a statement saying that they “had absolutely no intention of publishing the identities of the five friends this weekend,” ITV News reported.
“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 judge in the case, as well as the newspaper, previously received the names in confidence for its defense as part of the court process, the report states.
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