Meghan Markle Filed Court Papers To Stop The Daily Mail From Publishing The Names Of Her Friends Who Spoke To People Magazine

Last year, five of Meghan Markle’s close friends anonymously came forward to “speak the truth” about their friend for a People magazine cover story. The truth being that Meghan is awesome. This was a couple months before Meghan gave birth, and the sources voiced their concerns about how the “global bullying” was affecting her and her unborn child. They also spilled pro-Meghan tea on her daily life, family drama, and what a selfless buddy she is.

Now The Daily Mail, the Snidely Whiplash of British tabloids, is threatening to release the friends’ names. In response, Meghan’s legal team has filed an application to stop them. Reminder that Meghan’s lawsuit against Associated Newspapers (the publisher of The Mail On Sunday and The Daily Mail), over a private letter between her and her father being published, is still ongoing.

In her witness statement in the application filed at the High Court in London, Meghan says (via People):

“Associated Newspapers, the owner of The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, is threatening to publish the names of five women—five private citizens—who made a choice on their own to speak anonymously with a U.S. media outlet more than a year ago, to defend me from the bullying behavior of Britain’s tabloid media.”

“These five women are not on trial, and nor am I. The publisher of the Mail on Sunday is the one on trial. It is this publisher that acted unlawfully and is attempting to evade accountability; to create a circus and distract from the point of this case—that the Mail on Sunday unlawfully published my private letter.

Each of these women is a private citizen, young mother, and each has a basic right to privacy. Both the Mail on Sunday and the court system have their names on a confidential schedule, but for the Mail on Sunday to expose them in the public domain for no reason other than clickbait and commercial gain is vicious and poses a threat to their emotional and mental wellbeing.

“The Mail on Sunday is playing a media game with real lives.

“I respectfully ask the court to treat this legal matter with the sensitivity it deserves, and to prevent the publisher of the Mail on Sunday from breaking precedent and abusing the legal process by identifying these anonymous individuals – a privilege that these newspapers in fact rely upon to protect their own unnamed sources.”

Imagine those words passionately spoken by a blazered Meghan in an electric Suits courtroom scene (that show was about lawyers, right?), as those five private citizens (wearing identity-shielding balaclavas) line up behind her, nursing their young.

Sources close to Meghan’s lawyers say the Associated Newspapers’ legal team reached out on Monday, claiming Meghan’s list of confidential names should be “properly reportable by the media”, and if her people didn’t respond, they’d assume the names were no longer confidential. Meghan’s legal team took this as a threat that they’d expose and publish their identities.

In response to Team Meghan filing papers, a Team Daily Mail spokesman issued a statement saying they had “absolutely no intention of publishing the identities of the five friends this weekend”, but, since the friends’ evidence is at “the heart of the case”, their names shouldn’t be kept secret.

Yet another source close to Meghan says the names have already been provided to the judge and Associated Newspapers “in confidence for its defense as part of the court process”. The source goes on to say:

“We vehemently believe that the Mail’s threat to publish has nothing to do with the case, and is only being done so the Mail can target five innocent women through the pages of its newspapers and its website,” the source adds.

Pic: Wenn.com