‘Meghan Markle’s Former Press Secretary Reveals She Personally ‘Toiled’ Over That Letter to Her Father so It Could Not Be ‘Manipulated’’
Meghan Markle’s lawsuit against a U.K. tabloid continues. As the case moves forward details about the letter she wrote her estranged father, Thomas Markle, emerge. More specifically how, according to Meghan’s former press secretary Jason Knauf, the Duchess of Sussex “toiled” over it to prevent tampering.
Meghan pleaded with her father to stop speaking to the media in the letter
The now-40-year-old penned a five-page letter to her father following her 2018 royal wedding to Prince Harry. In it, she questioned her father’s reasons for speaking to the media about her.
Meghan told her father he broke her heart “into a million pieces.” Later, she described how he caused “unnecessary and unwarranted pain by going to the papers.” At another point, she said he chose not “to tell the truth.”
After receiving the letter Meghan’s father shared excerpts with the Mail on Sunday, which they then published. That in turn launched the lawsuit. Following years of legal proceedings, Meghan won the privacy suit in February 2021 but the tabloid appealed the decision.
Jason Knauf says Meghan Markle numbered the letter’s pages paid attention to page breaks to prevent tampering
Knauf explained, in a witness statement, how Meghan strategically wrote the letter. “She explained to me by text that she had numbered the pages at the top to indicate the length of the letter (1/5, 2/5, etc.),” Knauf said, according to the New York Post.
The Duchess of Sussex didn’t stop there. “She also deliberately ended each page part way through a sentence so that no page could be falsely presented as the end of the letter,” Knauf explained. “She said she had ‘toiled over every detail which could be manipulated.’”
Per Newsweek, Knauf also revealed Meghan sent him a draft of the letter asking for feedback. “Obviously everything I’ve drafted is with the understanding that it could be leaked,” she said. “So I have been meticulous in my word choice but please do let me know if anything stands out to you as a liability.”
Meghan also added: “Honestly Jason, I feel fantastic, cathartic and real and honest and factual. If he leaks it then that’s on his conscience but at least the world will know the truth, words I could never voice publicly.”
What Jason Knauf’s testimony means for Meghan’s privacy lawsuit moving forward
So what does the latest development in Meghan’s privacy lawsuit mean? The Duchess of Sussex is being criticized, along with Harry, for contradicting statements. Both have spoken out against disinformation. Meanwhile, an email from Meghan’s court case shows she cooperated with Finding Freedom authors despite previously saying otherwise.
As for Knauf’s witness statement about considering a potential leak, Meghan addressed it in a witness statement. “To be clear, I did not want any of it to be published,” she said. Rather, she “wanted to ensure that the risk of it being manipulated or misleadingly edited was minimized, were it to be exploited.”
