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Harry and Meghan are in the thick of it again.

Since they left the royal family in 2020, they’ve waged multiple public wars, including 10 lawsuits against different media outlets and the British government, shelling out millions on legal fees.

Now Prince Harry’s phone-hacking lawsuit against the U.K.’s The Sun newspaper could cause even more of a stir.

The publishers’ lawyers are accusing Harry of “obfuscation”, alleging that the duke “deliberately destroyed” evidence, including hundreds of texts and emails, In Touch Weekly reports.

English High Court Justice Timothy Fancourt agreed that there was “troubling evidence” that some confidential messages were destroyed “well after this claim was underway,” and called it “a real concern” that Harry himself had been the one to search for the relevant documents at his Montecito, California home.

Harry, the judge ordered, needs to do everything he can to turn over the texts and emails or explain to the court “what exactly happened.”

Harry’s lawyers insist he already went “above and beyond his obligations” to retrieve any relevant evidence.

“But it seems like the judge isn’t buying it. This reeks of a cover-up,” a source tells In Touch.

The “obfuscation” might be Harry trying to preserve whatever simulacrum of relationship there might be between him and his brother Prince William and father King Charles, who he pushed under the bus in his memoir Spare.

Harry’s attorney David Sherborne acknowledged that many of Harry’s texts pertain to his 2023 memoir and were deleted because they contained “highly sensitive information about Harry and the royal family, which if leaked, would not only compromise his security but also be potentially damaging to [him] and his family.”

There is also the possibility that Harry is solely protecting his wife, Meghan, who sources say was involved in the penning of Spare.

“The world will find out soon enough,” says the source. “It’s only a matter of time before the evidence is retrieved — if it hasn’t been already — and it will destroy Harry.”

Harry allegedly deleted drafts of Spare – 400 pages were apparently cut – but also a trove of messages between him and ghostwriter J.R. Moehringer, who after the bestselling tell-all was published in 2023, wrote in The New Yorker that they left out “a thousand things”.

“There are some things that have happened, especially between me and my brother and to some extent between me and my father,” he said, “that I just didn’t want the world to know, because I don’t think they will ever forgive me.”

Not that Charles or William have forgiven him anyway.

“They have basically cut him out of the family entirely because of what was published,” the source points out. “So you can only imagine what private information he didn’t include about them that is in those messages.”

The source added that “in this context, there could be inconsistencies in his stories that might shred his credibility,” noting that Meghan won’t be spared either.

“She was a big motivation for him to set the record straight”, the source said and was the first to hint that someone in the royal family questioned the colour of her children’s skin. The Dutch edition of Omid Scobie’s 2023 book Endgame seemingly outed Kate Middleton and Charles as the culprits.

“When people read about what really went down, Meghan and Harry were forced to deny that they ever accused anyone of being racist,” the source points out. “If Harry’s deleted messages include Meghan attacking the royal family, especially Charles and Kate, who are both battling cancer, it would be disastrous for her image.”

Meghan is already largely to blame for the couple’s fraught post-Megxit business ventures even as she is in the midst of launching her new American Riviera Orchard brand. So “of course, Harry would want to protect her from more backlash,” says the source.

“Also, if messages show she had a huge hand in directing the narrative of Spare, that would be explosive.”

There are also reports that their marriage is rocky, so it is doubtful that they can survive yet another major scandal.

[source:intouchweekly]