Even as Prince Harry is in the midst of a contentious court case over the visa that allowed him to be admitted to the United States, former President Donald Trump accused the Biden administration of “protecting Harry” by keeping his immigration application under wraps.
The Heritage Foundation has been battling in court to make the application public and is fighting to obtain the records on the grounds that the prince's admitted drug use should have been a factor that could have barred him from the country.
On Saturday, Trump said he was not on the prince’s side.
“I wouldn’t protect him. He betrayed [Queen Elizabeth II]. That’s unforgivable. He would be on his own if it was down to me,” the former president told the Daily Express during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.
Trump said the royal family was "too gracious" to Harry after "what he has done."
The Heritage Foundation has argued that admissions of drug use are usually something that keeps someone out of the country, while the Department of Homeland Security is pushing back, according to the New York Post.
In his book "Spare,” Harry said he has used magic mushrooms, cocaine and marijuana.
“Given Harry’s extensive drug use admissions, normally disqualifying for entry into the United States, Americans deserve to know if Prince Harry lied on his application and DHS looked the other way or gave him otherwise preferential treatment,” Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, wrote Thursday, according to Time.
On Friday, DHS and the foundation faced off in court over Heritage’s appeal of the decision not to share Harry’s immigration records.
“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 offenses," the foundation said in its lawsuit.
DHS attorney John Bardo said “the book isn’t sworn testimony or proof” that Harry took drugs, according to The Telegraph.
“Saying something in a book doesn’t necessarily make it true," Bardo said.
Gardiner called that a “ridiculous argument.”
“This is Prince Harry’s book. He has never denied anything in his own book ... including the extensive widespread drug use,” he said after the hearing.
During the hearing, Bardo said it was plausible that the prince entered the U.S. on what’s known as a "category A” visa used for diplomats on official duties.
“He’s still a member of the British Royal family and has the title Duke of Sussex. … He’s still a government official in the U.K. by his birth and title," the DHS attorney said.
Heritage Foundation lawyer Samuel Dewey called that “absurd” and “preposterous,” noting that by the time Harry came to America, he was no longer a working royal.
It would be a “huge red flag” to have admitted him in that way “when the whole world knows he’s not a working royal,” Dewey said.
