Prince Harry’s Visa Drugs Lawsuit With the Heritage Foundation Has Been Closed After a Secret Ruling

The Heritage Foundation’s lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security over Prince Harry’s visa status and his former drug use has been closed, according to a report from Newsweek.

The case was reportedly terminated on Monday, September 9, after multiple sealed orders were filed and heard before Judge Carl J. Nichols in Washington, D.C, according to court documents obtained by the outlet. It’s not clear as of publication why the case was closed or if Harry’s visa papers will be made public.

Heritage, a conservative think tank based in D.C., filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in May 2023 demanding the publication of the Duke of Sussex’s visa documents after he wrote in his memoir, Spare, that he had used illegal drugs including cocaine, marijuana and mushrooms in the past. Heritage argued that Harry’s use of narcotics should have kept him from living and working in the U.S., where he and wife Meghan Markle moved in 2020.

According to the court documents, the organization suggested that Harry, 39, may have lied about his past drug use or was given special treatment because of his royal status when obtaining his visa.

“[The case] comes about in the main because HRH [His Royal Highness] voluntarily—and for immense profit — admitted in writing to the elements of any number of controlled substance violations,” Heritage’s lawyers wrote. “The Duke of Sussex did so despite the fact that it is widely known that such admissions can have adverse immigration consequences for non-citizens and despite employing preeminent legal advisors on both sides of the Atlantic.”

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According to Newsweek, government lawyers argued in another filing that they “cannot confirm or deny whether any other records that [Heritage] are seeking exist because the mere acknowledgment of these records would constitute an unwarranted invasion of Prince Harry’s privacy. The records are particularly sensitive because releasing them, even in part, would reveal Prince Harry’s status in the United States, which Prince Harry has not disclosed.”

The filing continued, “Specifically, the records would reveal the types of documents that Prince Harry used to travel to the United States, his admission status, and any immigration, or non-immigration, benefits that he may have sought. Courts consistently hold that a person’s visa or immigration status is private, personal information exempt from disclosure.”

Judge Nichols requested to see Harry’s visa records privately earlier this year, with Biden administration lawyers confirming in April that they had complied with the order.

In Spare, Harry admitted that he had done cocaine during his teenage years. “At someone’s house, during a hunting weekend, I was offered a line, and since then, I had consumed some more,” he wrote. “It wasn’t very fun, and it didn’t make me feel especially happy as seemed to happen to others, but it did make me feel different, and that was my main objective. To feel. To be different.”

He also wrote about his experiences with psychedelic drugs, admitting that they “did me some good as well.”

“I’d experimented with them over the years, for fun, but now I’d begun to use them therapeutically, medicinally. They didn’t simply allow me to escape reality for a while, they let me redefine reality,” he continued. “Under the influence of these substances, I was able to let go of rigid preconcepts, to see that there was another world beyond my heavily filtered senses, a world that was equally real and doubly beautiful — a world with no red mist, no reason for red mist. There was only truth.”

Harry concluded, “After the psychedelics wore off my memory of that world would remain: This is not all there is. All the great seers and philosophers say our daily life is an illusion. I always felt the truth in that. But how reassuring it was, after nibbling a mushroom, or ingesting ayahuasca, to experience it for myself.”