The Palace, Police and Press Owe Meghan Sussex Answers After Years of Amplifying Thomas Markle’s Claims

As investigations into serious allegations against Thomas Markle Sr. develop across several countries, the Metropolitan Police admits it received a warning in January 2019 but failed to alert overseas law enforcement agencies.

Curiously, the Daily Mail now reports that the royal protection officer who allegedly advised Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, against publicising those allegations may never be identified.

How convenient that the institution responsible for handling the warning is struggling to establish who did what. Now, the questions should no longer be centred on why Meghan distanced herself from her father. They should focus on the police, royal household and newspapers whose decisions helped shape the public narrative in support of this accused man.

The Metropolitan Police Cannot Explain Away Seven Years of Inaction

On 29 October, Scotland Yard confirmed that Roslyn Loveless’s letter had reached its Fixated Threat Assessment Centre in January 2019. Officers assessed it and forwarded it to what the Met calls the Sussexes’ office. But Prince Harry and Meghan still shared Kensington Palace staff with Prince William and Kate Middleton at the time. So who actually received and handled the letter? The Met also failed to alert overseas law enforcement agencies.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct has now launched an investigation into that failure. According to The Times, the Met also struggled to locate its original copy and requested Meghan’s copy. I’ll leave readers to decide whether this represents staggering incompetence or something more troubling. Either way, the Metropolitan Police owes the public a proper explanation.

Then came Martin Robinson’s 3 November Daily Mail report, quoting an anonymous (oc course, they are) former protection officer who suggested that loyalty to Meghan or the Royal Family might explain why the officer allegedly responsible for delivering the warning cannot be identified.

The former armed officer, who served for years in royal protection, suggested the individual may already have retired.

Tracing the officer could depend on ‘where their loyalty lies’, he said, adding that many officers could have been involved.

However, he believes the individual was more likely to have been a senior protection officer.

Daily Mail

What a ridiculous explanation, and frankly, an insult to the public’s intelligence. Does the Daily Mail seriously expect readers to accept this? We are talking about correspondence received by a specialist police unit, not a casual conversation between friends. There should be proper procedures, official records and a clear chain of accountability.

Where are the internal records, correspondence logs and authorisations? Who assessed the allegations? Who decided not to contact overseas investigators?

And why is an anonymous source speculating about Meghan’s loyalties when the Met should be accounting for its own procedures?

The Royal Family Was Already Involved in Managing Thomas Markle

Here is where Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and the former Kensington Palace household deserve considerably greater scrutiny. In his January 2020 documentary, Thomas Markle declared that the royals owed him compensation for what he had experienced. Thomas was hardly a stranger to royal officials. As legal correspondence from Jason Knauf’s lawyers confirmed in May 2021, the Palace had repeatedly contacted Thomas Markle during the 2018 controversy over his staged paparazzi photographs and dealings with the press.

In May 2021, Sky News reported that Jason Knauf’s lawyers acknowledged he had spoken to Thomas Markle repeatedly in an effort to protect him from media intrusion. Mind you, Meghan and her father became estranged in 2018 after his staged paparazzi photographs and subsequent media interviews damaged their relationship.

That makes the Palace’s relationship with Thomas worth examining. How does it fit with Daily Mail journalist Caroline Graham’s close relationship with Markle and Thomas Markle Jr.’s reported claim that his father’s future statements and exclusives would go through the newspaper?

Now, we don’t have evidence that Knauf arranged those media relationships, but the public deserves a clearer account of how the Palace managed its contact with Thomas while his attacks on Meghan continued to receive extensive media coverage.

Knauf served as communications secretary to Harry and Meghan within the shared royal household before later working for William and Kate.

More importantly, Meghan’s messages disclosed during her privacy litigation revealed that Harry’s relatives repeatedly pressured the couple to resolve the Thomas Markle controversy.

She described the family persistently questioning why she could not simply visit her father. Which begs the question: why were some royal commentators and television presenters so insistent that Meghan reconcile with her father? Good Morning Britain repeatedly gave Thomas Markle a platform to air his grievances, while other media outlets portrayed Meghan’s refusal to reconcile with her father as a serious character flaw.

To recap, royal officials maintained direct contact with Thomas Markle, while members of the Royal Family pressured Meghan to reconcile with her father and end the public controversy surrounding their estrangement. Yet the Sunday Times subsequently reported claims that senior royal officials knew nothing about Roslyn Loveless’s warning.

Those assertions require evidence, not anonymous reassurance. And forgive us for treating the Sunday Times’ reporting with scepticism, particularly when its royal editor, Roya Nikkhah, repeated the false claim this week that Idris Elba had apologised to King Charles over remarks made by Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister, Gaston Browne.

In reality, Elba had expressed sympathy about the rain Charles endured the previous day. A comment about the weather had been transformed into a story about a Black British actor apologising to the monarch for an elected Caribbean leader’s political position.

If royal reporting can get such a straightforward exchange wrong, readers are entitled to demand stronger evidence for anonymous claims about what senior palace officials supposedly knew.

We have no evidence that Charles, William, Kate or Knauf personally knew what the warning letter contained. But their offices and staff should explain what procedures existed for handling sensitive police correspondence and whether those procedures were followed.

Meghan’s Niece Speaks Out as the Markle Investigation Becomes Another Tabloid Circus

The latest development comes from Noel Rasmussen, Samantha Markle’s estranged daughter and Meghan’s niece, who has given interviews to both The Telegraph and the Daily Mail about the allegations against her grandfather.

In her 2 November Daily Mail interview, Rasmussen revealed that her late grandmother, Roslyn Loveless, asked her to mail the warning letter to Meghan’s police protection team in London. She says she had no knowledge of its contents.

The reporting reveals another discrepancy. ITV News examined Roslyn Loveless’s letter and confirmed that she addressed it to the Met’s Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, not Meghan personally. Yet the Daily Mail initially reported that Noel Rasmussen mailed it to Meghan in London, before later specifying her police protection team. Why didn’t the newspaper make that distinction clear from the start?

The Met received the letter and had responsibility for assessing the allegations and referring them to the appropriate authorities. The Daily Mail should clarify its reporting rather than leave readers confused about who received the warning and who was responsible for handling it.

Rasmussen also defended Meghan’s decision to keep her children away from Thomas Markle. Her account is significant, particularly given the Metropolitan Police’s handling of the letter. But the increasingly sensational coverage is deeply troubling.

The problem is how the British tabloids are turning allegations involving potential child abuse victims into another series of Markle family exclusives.

This is not a royal soap opera. We are talking about allegations involving the sexual exploitation of children. Yet once again, the family drama threatens to overshadow the people whose welfare should matter most: the potential victims.

At what point will the British press stop treating this as entertainment and start giving the seriousness of these allegations the respect they deserve?

Enough of the Markle Family Circus. What About the Children?

The British tabloids have spent years turning Meghan’s estrangement into entertainment. Now allegations involving possible child victims risk receiving the same treatment.

We have family interviews, anonymous palace briefings, speculation about missing protection officers and detailed descriptions of allegedly disturbing material.

Meanwhile, Philippine police have reported preliminary findings of suspected child sexual abuse material, and Mexican authorities have seized items for further examination. Those investigations should determine what happened, who was responsible and whether children were harmed.

Potential victims are not supporting characters in a royal scandal. Their safety, dignity and access to justice must come before another tabloid exclusive.

The newspapers that spent years scrutinising Meghan’s decision to keep her father away from herself and her children should now apply that same determination to examining their own editorial conduct and the failures of the institutions involved.