I haven’t read every single part of Byline Times’ cover story about Dan Wootton, Kensington Palace, and the Christian Jones fiasco, but what I’ve read already is pretty explosive, and it’s telling that the British media has clammed up entirely about Byline’s story, just as they refused to cover much of the unfolding Wootton scandal several months ago. Most of the British papers don’t want to touch this because they’re too intimately involved with the trading of royal stories and every single tabloid knew that Clarence House and Kensington Palace would give away negative stories about the Sussexes to protect Charles, William and their wives. For Dan Wootton, the shift in allegiance came in the spring of 2019, right after he reported the now infamous “rural rival” story, linking Rose Hanbury to William and Kate. From Byline:

On 13 March 2019, Wootton published an article in The Sun about an alleged falling out between Prince William and Kate and the Marquess and Marchioness of Cholmondeley, David Rocksavage and Rose Hanbury, whom the paper dubbed Kate’s “rural rival”. For reasons that are not clear, the article was subsequently removed from The Sun’s website, but remained widely
reported elsewhere.

A former friend of Wootton’s told Byline Times that the journalist’s allegiance appeared to quickly shift from one prince to another. “Dan hated Prince William until around May 2019,” they said. “Behind closed doors, he didn’t have a good word for him. He was always talking about his attitude. But Dan never criticised Harry, really. He never seemed to have much interest at all. Then, suddenly in the summer of 2019, he switched. Basically, he was hating on Harry and Meghan. He had previously been obsessed with Prince William. And then he switched to the Sussexes.”

[From Byline Times]

Yep. That spring, Kensington Palace sprang into action as they attempted to contain the Rose Hanbury story and stop the bleeding. William/KP followed two paths of action. One, legal threats, bullying, undercover gag orders, invisible contract stuff. Two, William openly “struck bargains” with media outlets to feed them negativity about the Sussexes. Remember those James Palmer tweets? He was at Foreign Policy at the time (I think he still is.) It was common knowledge within British journalism-circles. And it was obvious from Wootton’s reporting that he had struck some kind of deal with William, not only to get Sussex exclusives, but to embiggen William.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images, Instar, GB News.