Well this is certainly explosive. To be fair, we’ve known or theorized about big chunks of Byline Times’ big new exclusive, but it’s legitimately shocking to see everything laid out with a timeline, plus details we’ve never heard before. Byline’s new cover story is “Exploding ‘Megxit’: How Dan Wootton and a Cash-for-Leaks Scandal Split the Monarchy.” Byline lays out the facts, including Dan Wootton paying Prince William’s press secretary Christian Jones and his partner for information about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and baby Archie. When the bribery scheme was uncovered by both The Sun (Wootton’s then-employer) and Prince Harry, all hell broke loose. In 2020, Harry was ready to sue the Sun and name Christian Jones and Wootton’s accomplices. That’s when then-Prince Charles and the whole royal institution made a big gamble: cut off the Sussexes as a way to force them to come crawling back to the UK, humbled and broke. From Byline’s teaser:

King Charles “pushed” the Duke and Duchess of Sussex into commercial deals in the US by withdrawing £700,000 funding for a trial year in Canada over a royal cash-for-leaks scandal sparked by journalist Dan Wootton, Byline Times can reveal. The financial sanction stemmed from a refusal to remove from legal papers the name of a Kensington Palace aide whose partner was receiving money from the then Sun newspaper executive editor, allegedly for stories about ‘Megxit’ and Prince Archie.

It resulted in the collapse of the ‘Sandringham Agreement’ struck under the late Queen in January 2020 to give Prince Harry and Meghan Markle an opportunity to escape the royal press rota in the UK and continue in public service from North America.

Prince Harry and Meghan were forced out of the Sandringham Agreement to continue in public service from Canada when his father pulled the plug on funding. It followed news that a partner of a key aide to Prince William received £4,000 from The Sun allegedly for stories about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex when Wootton was executive editor.

The payments [from The Sun] came to light in anonymous whistle-blower emails claiming to be from admin workers within the Murdoch newspaper publishing empire. They told how the payments had provoked panic at The Sun and claimed senior executives quietly brushed the matter under the carpet. The payments allegedly related to stories about Archie’s nannying and godparent arrangements and Wootton’s January 2020 breaking story about so-called ‘Megxit’.

The Metropolitan Police looked into the alleged leaking but could not go to a judge for a warrant to search royal staff property without knowing the identity of the whistle-blowers. Two internal royal investigations followed – one involving Simon Case, who is today the embattled head of the civil service facing questions over the Government’s response to the pandemic. The palace investigations cleared the aide after he denied being the source of the Archie and Megxit information and told Case that neither he nor his partner were friends with Wootton, although he admitted to knowing the journalist. Byline Times has uncovered new photographic evidence of Wootton, the aide and the aide’s partner at a lavish private birthday party Wootton threw for his close friends in a £1,675-a-night hotel suite.

Prince Harry sent formal ‘letters before action’ detailing the claims about Wootton and the palace to News UK. Sir Clive Alderton – today King Charles and Queen Camilla’s right-hand man – and the former Lord Chamberlain Lord Peel put pressure on Harry to alter the legal papers. When the aide’s name was not removed from the legal letters, the Sussexes were cut adrift financially and left unable to protect themselves despite having a security threat level equal to the monarch.

The royal household had thought the threat of exposure would force Harry and Meghan to return to the UK, where their profile could be controlled preventing them from eclipsing the future King. But it drove a wedge through the Royal Family and set in train events leading to Prince Harry’s book Spare, a string of high-profile commercial media deals, and ongoing bad blood in the British monarchy.

[From Byline]

The most damning information, to me, is the stuff about Charles deciding to withdraw from the “one-year breather” Sandringham deal, which would have had the Sussexes with royal protection and funding so that they could figure things out. We’ve heard variations on why that deal fell apart and when. The idea that the inciting incident was “Harry refusing to back down about naming William’s private secretary as a leaker” is as good a theory as anything else. I suspect that was only one part of why the “deal” fell apart in a matter of two months.

One thing that I absolutely, 100% believe is “The royal household had thought the threat of exposure would force Harry and Meghan to return to the UK, where their profile could be controlled preventing them from eclipsing the future King.” I’ve said that for years, that the Windsors believed that throwing the Sussexes to the wolves and putting them in mortal danger would somehow convince Harry to divorce Meghan and come crawling back to the UK. The Windsors have been reeling for four years that their stupid plot failed so spectacularly.

One question I still have, to this day, is about the intimacy of William’s involvement in all of these schemes. It’s clear that the Rose Hanbury story – which broke around March/April 2019 – sent William spinning and he was actively looking to make any deal he could to protect his own reputation. But for years now, I’ve just been left with the impression that William is no mastermind, he’s an empty suit and the Tories’ useful idiot. It would not surprise me at all if William was truly too stupid to understand most of what was happening with his Tory handlers. Which isn’t to say that William bears no responsibility – he’s a villain, absolutely, and his ignorance, laziness and childishness led to all of this. He was too stupid to hire responsible staff, and instead he gave free rein to his senior staff/Tory handlers to simply “manage” the burying of the Rose Hanbury story by any means necessary.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar.