Prince Harry’s drug use visa case could make his life very awkward under Trump
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.
The King, like Prince William, is thought to be barely on speaking terms with Harry at the moment but expelling him would hardly serve as a good backdrop to the Government’s mooted plan to send the monarch and Queen Camilla to the US on a state visit or have them invite Trump to the UK.
Harry, 40, and Meghan, 43, are believed to be buying a house in Portugal that could serve as a European refuge for the couple but any thoughts of returning to live in the UK may hinge on a forthcoming court case in which he is challenging the Home Office over its refusal to guarantee him and his family police protection. That court case, an appeal seeking to challenge the refusal of His Majesty’s government to give the Sussexes automatic protection, is, however, considered to be the biggest cause of tension between the King and his younger son at the moment.
It is not the only cloud on the horizon for the Royal Family. Prince Andrew, and his friendship with the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, could be dragged into the headlines again after Kish Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director, told Senate confirmation hearings last week that he would get to the bottom of a child sex trafficking scandal involving the financier and other wealthy individuals. Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein.
“Child sex trafficking has no place in the US. I will do everything to make sure the American public knows the full weight of what happened,” Patel said, agreeing to open records of “who flew on Epstein’s plane and who helped him build an international human trafficking, sex trafficking ring.”
Like the Duke of York, the new US president once socialised with Epstein. So quite how open the FBI will be about any fresh investigation remains to be seen.
Trump has distanced himself from Epstein in recent years. When the financier was charged with running a sex ring of underage girls in 2019, Trump said: “I don’t know about it”. He also said: “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.”
But for Trump and his hard-right base in the US, criticising the Duke and Duchess of Sussex has become as an important part of the culture wars and their restatement of conservative values as it is for their counterparts in Britain. They show a dislike of Harry and Meghan because, in their view, they betrayed their family and the monarchy and are guilty of promoting the liberal values they detest. On top of that, they think Harry should be subject to the same immigration rules as anyone else, even if that means deporting him along with Latin American migrants who crossed into the US illegally from the Rio Grande.

Opposing them has become totemic for conservatives on both sides of the pond. Last week the former home secretary, Suella Braverman, went to Washington DC and, speaking on Capitol Hill, supported the Heritage Foundation in its legal challenge for “relief from judgment” to persuade the court to overturn its earlier refusal to release Harry’s immigration paperwork and correspondence surrounding it.
“I think there’s a very strong case for President Trump to intervene and to direct the release and disclosure of these documents,” Braverman said in a social media video.
“The American people should have the right to know what’s happened here. Prince Harry is a citizen who has come to the United States. We need to know whether he broke the rules to get into the United States. If he did, the American people have the right to know and those who allowed that to happen should be held to account.”
The foundation argues that either Harry lied on his forms in response to standard questions about drug use or was given special treatment by the Biden administration and allowed to stay in the US when others might have been rejected because of a similar history of substance misuse.
Nile Gardiner, the Anglo-American director of the foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom, said the former UK PM would have supported transparency over Harry.
“When I worked for Baroness Thatcher as a foreign policy aide in London from 2000 to 2002, it was her firm conviction that both the US and the UK must defend and control their borders and apply the rule of law in protecting them,” he wrote last year.
“I have no doubt my former boss would have backed our fight to determine if Harry received preferential treatment.”
In Washington, the Department of Homeland Security has so far resisted efforts to disclose the paperwork, arguing it would breach Harry’s right to privacy. But will it continue to do so under Trump?
In February last year, Trump said: “I wouldn’t protect him. He betrayed the Queen. That’s unforgiveable. He would be on his own if it was down to me.”
He went further in a GB News interview with Nigel Farage, saying: “We’ll have to see if they know something about the drugs, and if he lied they’ll have to take appropriate action.”