Ham pr disasters 60! ….they are mysterious and murky….mendacious and moany …..the markle family ….

[jeffgoldblum]

Well apparently this story isn’t going anywhere!

As this is a thread primarily about Sussex PR, I thought some might be interested in a link to a video I watched yesterday.
It's on a YouTube channel called Where Pop Culture Meets PR (someone referred to it on another thread - thank you!), by a PR professional.

This video goes through Meghan's statement from a PR perspective. I like it because it's not sensational and talks clearly about the PR aspects.

It was 6 days ago - she has done a follow-up video which I haven't yet watched.

You're assuming the DoS told Samantha Cohen.

You're also assuming the Met have referred themselves to the IOPC because (I assume) you think they think they have done something wrong. It might be that they are playing a blinder here by booting the ball to an organisation that is external to the Met and has the clout to investigate who/knew/said/did what to whom and when. And to make their findings public.

I asked on the previous thread something along the lines of - does anyone know if the IOPC has the clout to demand comms records from e.g. the office of the D&DoS.

Going back to the Markle Mexico lock-up photos, one of those crates seems to contain the racial assemblage of Barbie dolls that I remember Meghan praising her father for putting together. So at least a little of this stuff could actually be Meghan’s old things? So that muddles things. Meghan may be required to identify her own belongings.

Also, both TMSnr and TMJnr had access to all the properties in Mexico and the Philippines, where they lived together over the years. And now we have two newspaper crews with their mitts and DNA all over it all. It’s a total forensic mess.

"The letter was passed from royal protection officers to the joint office of the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge (William & Kate) and the Duke & Duchess of Sussex at Kensington Palace, which suggest that the wider royal household was aware of its contents"

That's quite an interesting detail, isn't it? This wasn't simply a matter confined to Harry and Meghan, nor can it necessarily be dismissed as something of which the wider royal establishment knew nothing. The letter was routed through a joint office serving both couples. Who knew what, and when, is now a rather more interesting question.

P.S. less that a year after this letter landed with the Office of the D&DoS, they were off ploughing their own furrow in Canada and then Cali. Freedom ( from the BFR) flight and all that, remember? *

They were finally Their Own People. Not bound by what the BRF or the Met had cooked up. Able to go to the FBI on the quiet and ask, what's going on with my dad? If they cared to. Did she?

• to stay in a pad owned by Tyler Perry FFS.

Silence is complicity and all that.

Your girl is cooked.

That's quite a leap. You're assuming that Harry and Meghan knew the contents of the letter, understood its significance and had reason to believe there was something actionable for the FBI. None of that has been established.
But there's another rather interesting detail emerging here. According to the Telegraph, the letter was passed to the joint Kensington Palace office serving both the Cambridges and the Sussexes. So perhaps we shouldn't be quite so confident that this was exclusively a Sussex matter.
If we're going to speculate about who knew what, perhaps we should be looking at the entire chain of circulation rather than selectively concentrating on one couple.

So I wonder why they had to ask MM about this letter, instead of the institution responsible for the records of the offices of the combined Duchies in 2019.

My money is still on MM getting a quiet heads-up and declaring the letter a nothingburger (having acquired a copy for future use once her dad was dead).

I believe the IOPC has a lot of powers including over third parties, so yes, much clout.

https://policing.uk/knowledge/complaints/iopc-role-and-powers

Could be interesting times ahead for Meghan and Harry giving statements.

I honestly think that’s the Telegraph writing bollocks, as explained by pp on the previous thread on the latter pages.

Has anyone blamed William yet?

Was thinking that myself !
Thanks for the new thread Jeff .

It’s just started.

To which end, I’m extremely glad about the IOPC investigation. It should reveal the factual details and not wallow in speculation, and make the main points public.

Ok, sadly I have some personal experience of this.

I lived overseas for a number of years, and DD spent her primary school years there.

A couple of years ago she told me something a friend had disclosed to her that indicated sexual abuse.

I worked at that time in a role that basically meant you should report ANYTHING that is potentially controversial i.e. blackmail material. I reported the info through work channels, they said they would report to the police. The uk police (Met) contacted me for further info (I didn't have any, DD could describe the block of flats but not the address and no further info about the perpetrator).

Months later my tenant overseas contacted me saying the local police had turned up asking questions, and leaving a contact phone number.

I phoned, got voicemail, and left my contact details. Never heard anything.

Sooooo...

There is a limit to what the uk.police can do, or what someone aware of abuse can do. Of course any individual should report what they know. The uk police should pass on any info they know. But sometimes the 'knowledge ' is very vague. And no-one can ensure the overseas police take any action.

Sadly.

Harry: ‘So…. did you ever find out if your dad was still under investigation my love or did they clear his name?’

Meg: ‘ I think through a lens of community, we can all work together to achieve the ultimate goal of empowering women and girls and how their world can look. No one person can hold that burden’

Harry: ‘So…. no?’

Meg: ‘That’s what I said’

Some people are trying to on this very thread, but they're flopping hard.

I think several different issues are being conflated here.

Nobody has suggested that William or Kate personally read this letter, still less that they were responsible for its contents or handling. The point is that the Telegraph reports it was passed to the joint Kensington Palace office serving both the Cambridges and the Sussexes. That is a relevant detail when considering the potential circulation of the correspondence within the Royal Household. Dismissing the reporting as bollocks doesn't establish that it is wrong.

Baital makes a useful point about the practical difficulties of overseas police enquiries. Clearly, information can be incomplete, investigations can go nowhere and the UK police cannot compel another jurisdiction to act. But that is a separate question from whether the Met followed the correct procedures in assessing and referring the information it received.

And that's precisely why the IOPC investigation matters. It should establish what the Met did, what it failed to do and why. We shouldn't prejudge its findings.
As for the suggestion that Meghan secretly acquired a copy for future use, or that Harry and Meghan were somehow complicit through silence, those are theories, not established facts.

I'm not particularly interested in allocating blame to William, Harry or Meghan before the evidence is available. I'm interested in the documentary trail, the decisions taken and who was informed.
Surely that's a more productive discussion than inventing conversations between Harry and Meghan or declaring that someone is 'cooked' before an independent investigation has even concluded.

Nowt to do with William! This is a matter for the Sussex & Markles.

It occurred to me that the reason the British tabloids (which includes the Telegraph) are dragging this story out, with nonsense photos of boxes of perfectly legal books that are supposedly evidence of a heinous crime, are to troll Meghan. It's still about her dad, after all. Every new headline must make her shudder. She asked for it, though, with her dumb statement.

Given M’s very quick statement when this story broke, surely she’d have thrown BP/WRF under the bus with something along the lines of “I was silenced for the last 7/8 years”. I just can’t envisage her holding back on that, it would have been her ultimate FU to everyone - the WRF, the media, the public. At the moment, that’s probably why I’m not putting much effort into querying much else in my head.

The only other thing I’ve quickly pondered and then dismissed is M being in cahoots with TMj. No way is my opinion. I think she already had most of her narrative built up in her head, with timely “receipts” (2025 letter to her dad). And then, somehow, TMj has pipped her to the post. So she’s rushed out her half-prepared, ready in advance, narrative statement without thinking it all through properly.

I get what you are saying but surely the man's daughter could explore every avenue available to her to ensure he couldn't cause harm? As a self styled activist & humanitarian surely all resources would be activated?

Well, it kinda looks like you are suggesting it, @queenparkerballs, especially from that there second paragraph....🤔

No leap.

MM just issued a statement saying she knew about the letter and the allegations ir contained back in 2018.

Er, no, sorry, 2019.

And that she was told by the Met there was an investigation, so she should say nothing, so as not to compromise it.

The the-RF-might-have-known-too argument is irrelevant. Once HAM were free of the RF they could say - and didn't they, on any matter but this - what they wanted.

MM was phoning up senators - hi, it's the Duchess of Sussex here - while sat ne t to Gloria Steinem, but couldn't quietly ask the local FBI about the allegations concerning her dad.

But no, here's an article that seems to imply that people other than MM knew aboutbthat letter. So that lets MM off the hook.

No, it doesn't. MM is definitely on the hook.

Or on Oprah that would have been huge.

The point is that the Telegraph reports it was passed to the joint Kensington Palace office serving both the Cambridges and the Sussexes.

We discussed this at the end of the last thread.

The Met Police statement is very clear - they sent the letter to 'the office of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex'. That exact phrase has been used in both statements, so we must presume it to be correct.

The first report in the media that the Sussexes and Cambridges were to split their offices was by Roya Nikkah in the Sunday Times in October 2018. James Holt pointed out in the Netflix series that for practical purposes the offices had split by December, when Kensington held two Christmas parties rather than one.

It's therefore unlikely that the Cambridges will have had any day-to-day involvement with Sussex correspondence by January 2019.

It's interesting that the Telegraph is now reporting the destination of the letter in this way, not having done so over the last week. It is the more interesting when you realise that the writer of this particular article is Victoria Ward.

Wait! It went to the joint office at Kensington Palace! So William and Kate must have read it, hatched a plot and forced poor innocent Meghan into silence. They probably held her pet rabbit hostage.
QED!