The royals and Dan Wootton: Byline Times part 1 of 3-year investigation into how Wootton got information about the royal family

[queentim]

Following their series about the Crisis in British Journalism and MediaToo movement, Byline Times reporters have recently released the first report of the 3 year investigation into the link between the royals and (disgraced) TV presenter Dan Wootton.

The first report reveals how Charles and William were angered that Harry refused to remove the name of an aide (William's aide in Kensington) who was paid cash to leak stories about his wife Meghan, and son Archie. This included investigations by the Met.

As a result, Charles removed the $700,000 granted to support them, which would have seen Harry and Meghan living in Canada and representing the Queen, in an effort to bring them back to the UK by exposing their location in Canada and removing their security. This was the collapse of the 'Sandringham Agreement', which resulted in the signing of the Sussexes media deals.

Some highlights, but can be bought for £3.6:

▪ It followed news that a partner of a key aide to Prince William received £4,000 from The Sun allegedly for stories about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex when Wootton was executive editor.

▪ The Metropolitan Police looked into the alleged leaking but could not go to a judge for a warrant to search royal staff property without knowing the identity of the whistle-blowers.

▪ Two internal royal investigations followed – one involving Simon Case, who is today the embattled head of the civil service facing questions over the Government’s response to the pandemic.

▪ Byline Times has uncovered new photographic evidence of Wootton, the aide and the aide’s partner at a lavish private birthday party Wootton threw for his close friends in a £1,675-a-night hotel suite.

▪ Prince Harry sent formal ‘letters before action’ detailing the claims about Wootton and the palace to News UK.

▪ When the aide’s name was not removed from the legal letters, the Sussexes were cut adrift financially and left unable to protect themselves despite having a security threat level equal to the monarch.

▪ The royal household had thought the threat of exposure would force Harry and Meghan to return to the UK, where their profile could be controlled preventing them from eclipsing the future King

Exploding ‘Megxit’: How Dan Wootton and a Cash-for-Leaks Scandal Split the Monarchy

Deference means 'submission and respect'. Sums it up

As in... Derxa addressed the future king with the deference he deserves

I don't understand why H and M's relationship with Omid Scobie, where they leak to him and lied about it in court is any different from the other press royal relationships being criticised.

It’s no different.

We have a book coming out the end of the month. Rehashed tripe I would imagine.

It’s different because Charles is Head of State and William will be too one day, and while media has fallen all over itself to critically examine everything about Harry and Meghan, there has been very little critical examination of the Head of State and the rest of his family. Certainly, not as much as there should be.

What Charles and William do wrong or not, is of concern because they hold positions of power. Democracies can not have an unexamined govt., not even if you are born to inherit that position.

Who gains from this?

"Meghan's father, and the two others are really awful, selling them out for the highest bid. How on earth she copes"

@Roussette Do you recognise the parallels between this statement and the interviews/books/docuseries undertaken by H and M?

Grifters gonna grift. That’s all I have to say.

I’d like to know just how connected they really are to Omid Scobie and just how much he gets from them directly.

I can’t remember Harry publicly threatening William or Charles
did I miss that

No. There is NO comparison with what the half brother and sister and father have done. So no no no.
Disgusting Blackface YouTube videos mimicking M, giving interviews saying Meghan hasn't had children, the children are actors or surrogates, tweeting the same endlessly until banned, selling them out in the most awful way, father threatening to give weekly interviews if they don't provide access to the children..need I go on

There is nothing you can say that will make me think there is any comparison whatsoever and that's all I'll say on it

This thread as normal has totally veered away from the subject like they always do

@Roussette well said
it’s like people can’t accept that the royal family do wrong things

and some people can’t accept H&M do wrong things.

Why do people get so worked up by this? All rather pathetic, just get on with your lives

They do lots wrong and I've said so before. They aren't perfect, quite flawed in fact.

Where the eff do people go looking for this stuff ...... no children, actors, surrogates , blackface 😮and how do they find it, I have only read about this on here.

Didn't M mention, very publicly, that she didn't sign any nondisclosure and that she had kept diaries of her time in the RF, it certainly came across as some kind of warning / threat.

Clearly M reaches a bigger audience than her horrible family do, but there is certainly a similarity between their modus operandi, even if one is more uncouth than the other (thankfully the uncouth one is not in mainstream).

Anyway, getting back to the Byline Times, for a lot of people who have heard about this report (again I have only heard about it on here), the veracity of that article, rightly or wrongly, is diminished because of the character involved in writing it.

Like most people, I have no doubt there is some funny business going on in both the RF camp and M&H camp, (even this article could be part of a PR campaign). It would have had more credibility if it also looked at the proven links between H&M and their leaks to the media.

Why do people get so worked up by this? All rather pathetic, just get on with your lives

I agree - and the Byline 'Investigation' is so pointless and banal. So someone on the royal staff supposedly 'leaked' something about Harry? So what? Who really cares? I got the impression that Harry and Meghan and their contacts have been furiously leaking stuff ever since Meghan appeared on the scene... It's just tedious tit-for-tat.

maybe its because Harry is seen as bad for talking (book) yet the RF are always "never complain , never explain" yet it seems thats not true.

@boxedandribboned Well said. The hypocrisy is astounding. I’d have more sympathy for their anti media campaign if they weren’t so obviously doing all the same stuff.

Where the eff do people go looking for this stuff ...... no children, actors, surrogates , blackface 😮and how do they find it, I have only read about this on here.

You must be new. It's been on here hundreds of times. Talked about in great detail in threads. I don't go looking. It's just out there and talked about over the years.

It’s all a bit “Wagatha Christie”

I think Harry has actually been protected by “ deals” with the press far more than he has been “ thrown to the wolves “
any negative stories pre Meghan were entirely his fault ( I’m thinking Las Vegas , drinking, drugs, fighting paps etc ) and there’s not much the family can do about his behaviour other than try and give him a positive press outside of this stuff and minimise the damage he causes to himself.
and that largely worked as he was v popular with the public inspite of his bad behaviour at times. People generally liked and sympathised with him.
him and Meghan also got a generally good press pre and post marriage until stories about their demanding behaviour became too common knowledge to keep a lid on.
again that’s not the family’s fault if everyone knows something has happened with staff for example or the silly crying story. You can’t stop the press running with it forever.

Goodness . Some people are very invested in denigrating the two journalists ( yes there are two) but are simultaneously ‘not interested’

How very …. unsurprising

So is the Dan Wooton story also ‘unreliable ‘? Or just the leaks that reflect v badly in the ‘royals’ ?

https://bylinetimes.com/2023/10/25/exploding-megxit-how-dan-wootton-and-a-cash-for-leaks-scandal-split-the-monarchy/

Totally agree.

They do wrong things, and stupid things and are massively whiny. What they aren't are Heads of State, nor do they expect their children and grandchildren to automatically be Heads of State from birth, no matter who they turn out to be. They are not paid for by the public purse, and don't have the ability to bend laws and be given advantageous treatment by dint of being Head of State.
They are essentially private citizens of another country, being hounded by the press because they decided to sue them. The vast majority of the noise is made up by the press and fanned by the press, turned into fact and then fed back to the baying mob. If the press stopped printing endless articles about them, if people stopped commenting on newspaper articles about them in huge volumes it wouldnt' matter how many books Harry published or how many times they called the paps.

I don’t think it’s that surprising, Novella. Dan Wootton and Dan Evans are to my mind two sides of the same coin - tabloid hacks with no real moral compass who look to exploit people to create content for their publications and have hazily-drawn lines of what’s legal, let alone moral (just my opinion, obviously!). One has even been convicted for illegal practices in the past. Both have talked about making past payments to staff members for stories. Both are still making their living in the media.

One now often makes Meghan and Harry his target, and the other the rest of the Royal family. One might think they’d both be regraded similarly - people whose stories you approach with a large grain of salt, and who you would not regard as remotely trustworthy. But strangely no - one is absolute scum, and one is a courageous whistleblower who should be admired, we are told. As ever, the inconsistency is marked.

Are they still being “ hounded “ by the press ? I agree that for a while it was crazy but I rarely see anything now other than on here or a pap photo that I suspect they arranged ( recent holiday) . I noticed an article right at the bottom of the DM page yesterday . Didn’t click on it however it occurred to me that a few months ago whatever it was would have been a headline .