At some point, I have to believe Meghan Markle will come to regret initiating legal action against Associated Newspapers Limited.
What probably looked like a low-risk attempt to silence critical media coverage of her and Prince Harry has quickly become more trouble than it’s worth.
Watch: Meghan Markle can protect the identities of five friends involved in her court case – for now!
Granted, she just scored a small victory. Not having to release the names of her five friends who, as likely as not, carried out Meghan’s wishes, gave her fan club something to cheer about.
Really, though: How long will that last?
The judge has already hinted that Meghan Markle won’t be able to protect her friends’ identities if she calls on them to give evidence:
At trial, that is a price that may have to be paid in the interests of transparency.
In other words, she’s in over her head.
In my opinion, this entire case was a badly-thought-out warning shot designed to dissuade other media outlets from taking a negative stance on either Meghan or her husband, Prince Harry.
What the Duchess of Difficult didn’t bargain for was the legal process shining a spotlight on the underhanded and devious tactics she seems to use to control her public image.
Nor did she count on the fact that Mr. Justice Warby is no fool. He sees right through the games she’s playing.
He said on Wednesday:
Both sides have demonstrated an eagerness to play out the merits of their dispute in public, outside the courtroom, and primarily in media reports.
Narrowing his criticism specifically to Meghan Markle and her legal team, he said they:
have been energetically briefing the media about these proceedings from the outset.
The judge didn’t stop at claiming Meghan has been using the media to further her cause.
He highlighted the role of Omid Scobie, Meghan’s apparent confidante. Scobie is the author of Finding Freedom, which Markle’s supporters insist on claiming is entirely neutral and written without Meghan or Harry’s input.
Before the witness statement was made public, Scobie had posted details to his Twitter, prompting this reaction from the judge:
[It was] accompanied by a quotation attributed to a close source criticizing the Mail for wishing to ‘target five innocent women through the pages of its newspapers and its website. Mr Scobie then tweeted the passage from the witness statement that I have quoted above. The inference invited is that he had been provided with a copy by representatives of the claimant. This seems very likely.
That’s not all.
For all the Sussex Squad’s insistence that the tabloids maliciously make up gossip about Meghan Markle out of whole cloth, it would appear not everything published about her is without foundation.
Mr. Justice Warby confirmed the veracity of an article claiming that private texts and emails between Meghan and former BFF Jessica Mulroney could be exposed.
And if those texts are exposed, you can bet the truth about the “real” Meghan Markle will inevitably spill out.
One has to wonder if Meghan foresaw any of this happening the day she decided to initiate legal action.
It would be ironic if Meghan’s undoing came about as a result of her own behavior rather than at the hands of the “evil” British media.