Biden Admin Accused of ‘Stonewalling’ Attempts to Unseal Prince Harry’s Visa Records

The Biden administration has been accused of “stonewalling” attempts under Freedom of Information laws to reveal details about Prince Harry’s visa application to the United States.

Prince Harry, who moved to California in 2020 alongside his former actress wife Meghan Markle to pursue money-making ventures in Hollywood rather than fulfil his duties as a member of Britain’s Royal Family, has faced questions about his American visa given his admission last year of drug use in his controversial memoir Spare.

The Heritage Foundation in the United States has argued that the Duke of Sussex’s admissions are grounds for a denial of a visa and therefore may have received special treatment from the government to stay in the country, given that sources have claimed that Prince Harry was truthful about his use of cocaine, cannabis, and magic mushrooms on his visa application.

The conservative think tank criticised the decision by the Department of Homeland Security and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and US Customs and Border Protection to deny a Freedom of Information request to fast-track the unsealing of the visa application, a move that the Heritage Foundation is set to appeal next month, The Telegraph reported.

American Freedom of Information laws allow for fast-tracked applications if there is “widespread and exceptional media interest in which there exist possible questions about the government’s integrity which affect public confidence”. While Heritage argued that the case of Prince Harry met those conditions, their application was rejected on the grounds that UK publishers who raised the issue were too “niche” in the United States.

Speaking with The Telegraph, one of the papers in Britain deemed too insignificant by the Biden administration, Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, said: “The Biden administration is clearly stonewalling here and they are trying to avoid releasing any documents.

“They are trying to do so by undermining the credibility of the British Press, which is outrageous, and by concentrating their fire on the British Press even though we have submitted articles in the US press about the same subject.”

Following the rejection, the Heritage Foundation will now seek a hearing before the US District Court for the District of Columbia in an attempt to overrule the administration’s ruling. If the attempt to fast-track the Freedom of Information request to unseal his immigration records is shot down, it could be months or possibly years before a decision is made on the request.

“The way it works here is that if you are asking for anything that is potentially significant you’re not going to get it unless you sue them,” said Samuel Dewey, the attorney representing the think tank in the case. “You can have a request that sits there for a year with pretty much nothing happening.

“This is an example of this administration’s unprecedented lack of transparency.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka