It’s been a few months since the Heritage Foundation provided content for their “niche” British newspaper partners. Heritage is an American think-tank, but they have several British right-wing psychos attached to the foundation, and those Brits decided to waste everyone’s time and resources by going on a months-long fishing expedition for Prince Harry’s visa application. Heritage filed a FOIA request for Harry’s visa, a request which was based on nothing more than “Harry wrote about his drug use” and “how dare the American government keep sensitive immigration documents private.” DHS has rejected Heritage’s repeated attempts and nuisance court hearings to get their hands on Harry’s visa, citing Harry’s right to privacy (the same right to privacy as every immigrant). It’s not a coincidence that the Daily Mail is running this piece as an exclusive just a week before Harry’s breezy visit to the UK, not to mention the Dusseldorf Invictus Games.

Prince Harry still has a right to privacy in regards to his US immigration files despite publicly disclosing intimate and personal details about his life, the Department of Homeland Security says. The Duke of Sussex had no qualms when it came to sharing private information in his memoir Spare – in which he even includes an anecdote about his frostbitten penis – as well as his six-part Netflix series with wife Meghan Markle late last year. But the DHS has argued that such previous public disclosures does not mean his visa records should be released, in a new legal filing which sought to dismiss an appeal by conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, to obtain the documents.

Nile Gardiner, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, told DailyMail.com that the response by DHS was a ‘disgrace’. He said: ‘The Biden administration should come clean over what’s contained in the immigration application. So far they are refusing to release the records which suggests that clearly there is something to hide. Prince Harry himself should support the release of his immigration records – if he has nothing to hide’.

DHS initially rejected the application and the Heritage Foundation filed a lawsuit in a court in Washington after its administrative appeal stalled. Both sides were asked by a judge to try to work out differences on key points, but after that failed DHS filed a request for summary judgment, or to dismiss the case. In the document, DHS went further than arguing that Harry still had a ‘right to privacy’ as it has done from the start. Now it claimed that even his disclosures made in his memoir and TV series did not mean it should have to hand the documents over.

Jarrod Panter, Acting Associate Center Director for Freedom of Information at DHS, wrote: ‘Prince Harry has not consented to the release of records related to or reflecting information about him. Despite the public role that Prince Harry has played in the UK and despite information that he has disclosed regarding his personal life, he still maintains a strong privacy interest in his immigration status and information about him reflected in (immigration) records. Prince Harry has not publicly or officially disclosed his status in the United States and has not surrendered all rights to personal privacy’.

DHS wrote: ‘Even though he is a public figure, Prince Harry still maintains a privacy interest in these types of records and in his immigration or visa status generally. Even if public figures may have a diminished expectation of privacy, they do not surrender their privacy interests entirely.’ The filing added that ‘were this not the case, a requester could go on a fishing expedition for (government) records for any celebrity at all’.

[From The Daily Mail]

There are more pissy, indignant quotes from that Heritage douchebag, but I let’s leave it at that. Heritage’s whole argument was always bullsh-t, and I’m glad DHS called them out in legal documents. If DHS granted the FOIA, they would be opening themselves up to releasing the immigration records of every celebrity, if not every immigrant. This months-long Heritage hissy fit is harassment and they need to back the f–k off.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.