The US government argued in a federal court that Prince Harry’s admissions in his memoir that he took drugs are not ‘proof’ that he actually did. They said it could have been a ploy to ‘sell books’.
Harry’s visa application is subject of a court case in the US as a conservative think tank in Washington DC, the Heritage Foundation, sued to force the release of the Duke of Sussex’s US immigration files, according to a report by the Daily Mail.
The think tank wants to probe if he lied about taking drugs at a certain point in his life. John Bardo, representing the Department of Homeland Security, told the court Harry’s book ‘Spare’ was not ‘sworn testimony or proof’ that he took drugs.
‘Just saying something in a book doesn’t make it true,’ Bardo was quoted as saying by the newspaper. He argued that Prince Harry’s immigration records should remain private and that people say many things about themselves to ‘sell books’.
Prince Harry last week said that the thought of getting an American citizenship has crossed his mind. “American citizenship is a thought that has crossed my mind but isn’t something that’s a high priority for me right now,” Prince Harry told Good Morning America.
“Widespread and continuous media coverage has surfaced the question of whether DHS properly admitted the Duke of Sussex in light of the fact that he has publicly admitted to the essential elements of a number of drug offences,” the think tank said in a court filing while adding the transcript of the interview.
US District Court Judge Carl J. Nichols, sitting in Court 17 of the E. Barrett Prettyman US Courthouse in Washington DC will soon make the ruling.
Foreigners, when they apply for a US visa, are asked on the DHS’s DH160 visa form: ‘Are you or have you ever been a drug abuser or addict?’
They are also asked to share whether they have ever ‘violated any law relating to controlled substances’. If they answer ‘yes’ they can still receive a waiver.
The conservative think tank wants to see if Harry admitted to using illegal drugs before gaining a visa and ascertain if he was granted a waiver or given preferential treatment.
The Daily Mail in its report citing people close to Prince Harry indicated that he answered truthfully on the application.
The 39-year-old Duke admitted in ‘Spare’ that he had used marijuana, cocaine and magic mushrooms.
Writing in Spare, Harry said ‘psychedelics did me some good’ and also described experimenting with the hallucinogenic Amazonian plant ayahuasca.
The UK royal in his memoir described those experiences that as ‘the cleaning of the windshield, the removal of life’s filters’.
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