Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s team leaked details of a meeting with King Charles III’s aide to journalist Charlotte Griffiths—who works for the same tabloid the couple have sued four times—before later seeking to distance themselves from the disclosure, she has claimed.
Photos of Liam Maguire, Harry and Meghan’s spokesman, and Meredith Maines, their then communictions chief, were published in The Mail on Sunday in July 2025 sparking hopes the royal rift might be healing.
However, there was also concern that the disclosure could undermine any tentative progress toward reconciliation. It came just months after Harry criticized his father in a BBC interview following the conclusion of his security lawsuit.
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Now Griffiths, editor-at-large of The Mail on Sunday, who broke the story, has said she was tipped off by the Sussex team and was surprised to later see a story in The Daily Telegraph saying Harry’s staff had denied involvement.
Prince Harry’s team have been contacted for comment.
Griffiths’ comments carry additional significance because she was already a prominent figure in Harry’s recent case against Associated Newspapers. During court proceedings, previously unseen Facebook exchanges between her and Harry were made public showing them discussing “movie snuggles.”
The allegation is striking because the Sussexes have repeatedly sued Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Mail titles, over reporting practices and invasions of privacy.
Why It Matters
Journalists rarely identify confidential sources. Griffiths said she chose to do so because she had been accused of obtaining stories illegally in Harry’s recent lawsuit against her newspaper. Harry’s case was that specific stories she wrote about him must have been gathered through criminal lawbreaking and could not have been leaked by his social circle.
Harry also accused the palace of leaking stories about him during an interview with 60 Minutes in January 2023: “There have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife. You know, the family motto is ‘never complain, never explain’. But it’s just a motto. And it doesn’t really hold.”
Charlotte Griffiths’ Account of How She Got The Meeting Story
In a Daily Mail article, Griffiths criticized Harry’s barrister David Sherborne and said he had portrayed her as a “fantasist” during court proceedings and by accusing her of making up an anecdote had effectively suggested she was “guilty of perjury, for which the maximum sentence is seven years imprisonment.”
“I can now reveal that, during the summer of 2025 a close adviser to Harry and Meghan had contacted me out of the blue and invited me to lunch at the Ivy restaurant in London,” she wrote.
“As a result of information given to me at that lunch meeting, I placed a series of stories in The Mail on Sunday that portrayed the couple in a positive light. This included a front-page article, which ran in July, suggesting that Harry and Meghan were attempting to rebuild their relationship with King Charles.
“It revolved around the fact that Liam Maguire and Meredith Maines, Harry and Meghan’s US PR chiefs, were to hold clear-the-air talks with the monarch’s aide Tobyn Andreae in London.”
Griffiths said she was “duly tipped off about the meeting” allowing the newspaper to arrange a photographer “to capture the cosy but very embarrassing scene” of the two camps settled “on a balcony plainly visible from the public park below.”
“In a development which speaks volumes for their integrity, ‘sources close to the Sussexes’ then briefed the Daily Telegraph that they were ‘very frustrated’ that the pictures of the Royal Over-Seas League gathering had ended up in The Mail on Sunday–suggesting, quite falsely, that the Palace was responsible for a grotesque betrayal of trust.”
The article in the Telegraph, referenced by Griffiths, read: “Sources close to Prince Harry insisted that the Sussexes were not responsible, and acknowledged that having the details of the meeting on newspaper front pages was hardly an ideal way to start what they had hoped would be a new period of peace. Buckingham Palace declined to comment.”
The Telegraph article did not report Sussex sources explicitly accusing Buckingham Palace of leaking the meeting details. Griffiths’ contention is that, by denying Harry’s team was responsible, the briefing implied that the disclosure must have come from elsewhere. She argues this left readers with the impression that Buckingham Palace was to blame when, she says, the information in fact came from the Sussex camp.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Daniel Orton and Tony Phillips
This is a developing story and will be updated.