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

[jeffgoldblum]

Well apparently this story isn’t going anywhere!

I think you're mixing two things up a bit here.

If Meghan's statement confirms she knew about the letter and the allegations in 2019, and was told there was an ongoing investigation, then fair enough, that's something to look at.

But the leap from that to saying she should have contacted the FBI is a different matter. What exactly was she told? Was she advised not to make further enquiries while the investigation was ongoing? We don't actually know.
And I don't think the wider Palace question just disappears because Meghan may have known about the letter. Both things can be looked at surely?
I'm not particularly interested in letting anyone off the hook, Meghan included, but equally I'm not going to decide who's guilty of what before the facts are established.

Seems to me that's rather the point of having an independent investigation in the first place.

It’s getting there! It must be his fault because he had a joint office with HaM once.

If she is "cooked" it is not because anything an IOPC investigation might reveal.

It is because she issued a statement saying she knew about the allegations in 2018. Er, sorry, 2019.

And then got on with her life, advocating for child safety.

Nobody is going to tell the King's sons wife not to make further enquiries about her father.
At the end of the day it is Meghan's father so it would be up to her & her husband to ensure they get updates etc. Even if the whole of the palace knew & half of London it is Meghan's father so it's on her, her brother & sister.

I would assume she would have contacted her brother & sister to make them aware of the letter. Even if they were no contact this is far too serious to ignore especially as Tommy J & Samantha were caring for T Snr..

😂 . Those straws are being grasped with grim determination.

Thanks for the link @TearsAtTannhauserGate.

I've also been looking here IOPC Investigations page

Some things that I have discovered:
When the IOPC is deciding who should investigate, there are a number of potentially relevant factors that may be taken into account, including ... significant media attention
IOPC investigators have powers similar to police constables, in that they can enter police premises to view and seize relevant material
Investigators gather evidence, which may involve obtaining other documents and records, such as telephone records

ETA @Rhaidimiddim this might answer your question

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.

@Rhaidimiddim Yes, this was something that occurred to me as well. The assumption is that they have referred themselves because there has been wrong doing on their part. They could well be doing this because there will have been conversations between the different parties and these need to be looked into and findings put on record.

I'm taking the liberty of replying to a post in the previous thread.

@Voolio ·
I don’t think it’s personal about W&C and what they knew and when. I think it’s a broader institutional transparency situation and one that needs to be considered in the uniquely relevant and intense months of 2018/19 over the QE2 / AMW crisis.
In Jan 2019 - Sam Cohen was H&M Private secretary - she had just come from a long tenure with QE2 where the AMW situation had been causing huge issues for coming up to a decade with one thing after another that the RF were unable to contain.
.................................
I would struggle then to understand how Sam Cohen would not recognise the sensitivity of this letter in the broader and simultaneous situation of AMW and therefore not escalate it.
Maybe she did and they all took the assurance from The Met that it was being investigated appropriately. Maybe royal officials conducted themselves appropriately and / or had no further obligations so nothing to see here. Or they didn’t.

You are assuming that Samantha Cohen knew the contents of the letter. SC was supposedly a guide for Meghan regarding protocol and conduct, as well as her private secretary; I doubt that opening letters was part of her duties...
And as for SC trusting the Met—that’s difficult; she surely must have known, as we know, that the Met lacked the jurisdiction to conduct an investigation concerning crimes committed by an American outside the UK...However, she could assume, yes, that the Met would notify other organizations with the authority to investigate (in this case, the Mexican police, I suppose).

Hence the inclusion of the photo of the Barbie dolls (presumably hers) by the Mail?

Just to draw your attention to the wording here - which you seem to have edited.

The Telegraph are not reporting here - they have editorialised. "...The Telegraph understands, which suggests that the wider Royal Household was aware of its contents". That's an opinion, not factual.

It's been widely reported that the Offices had been effectively separated for several months prior to the announcement of the split.

Plus the Met were very specific that they sent the letter to the Sussex Office, unlike the Telegraph they were reporting facts. The Met and the Teams that deal with the Royals know exactly how to refer to the relevant Offices.

It's an overused Sussex tactic to deflect and blame the Royals for their own flaws and faults, especially William & Catherine. And it doesn't hold water.

Edit to add - it's no one else's problem if H&M are too thick to understand the contents of letter sent to them 🙄 They had the Police right there to discuss it all.

@Voolio

At the time in 2019 - that is exactly what was happening in BP. They had already repeatedly put out public statements to deny AMW involvement. Then they paid VG multiple millions in 2022 to ‘settle out of court’ / silence her.

I disagree. Virginia was not paid for her silence; she reached a lawful out-of-court settlement. Let’s not forget that she spent a year asking for money in exchange for not filing a lawsuit. Once the lawsuit was filed, she had the right to decline the settlement and go to trial.
She chose not to do so.

Yep, and I don’t think I can be bothered with it tbh. It was covered in details toward the end of the last thread by quite a few posters.

It is the latest script, isn't it.

Any little scrap to indicate that the BP/KP/the Institution knew - flog it to spread the blame; and make out poor MM was silenced.

After the OW interview, she was obviously no longer silenced by the RF. Her dad, her responsibility, as the RF have made clear.

I am very grateful there is to be an IOPC investigation with some teeth.

I want to know if she contacted her brother & sister to let them know about the letter she received?
Surely they would have been even more entitled to be contacted as they were the ones caring & living with TM?
Did their mother contact them too to send the same letter?

It seems that many "hands" are involved before the authorities take action.
In the Philippines, Thomas Jr. turned to a private computer technician to unlock the devices found in the boxes before handing them over to the police...
Now, in Mexico, the Daily Mail has gained access to a storage unit—entering it and taking photos—only notifying the authorities afterward.
Any defense attorney would argue that the evidence may have been tampered with.
Obviously, interest in justice ranks below clickbait.

I've not mixed anything up.

She had a moral obligation to follow up on what she knew, in whatever way was open to her.

She had a copy of the letter. So simples - show it to the local FBI, trust their discretion to not ruin an ongoing investigation. Not hard for someone who had Gavin Newsom's phone number.

I gave up on the last thread as I was so far behind - I now realise the point I made in my post had already been made by others on the last thread, as well as on this. Need to read.

I will again belabour a point I may have made several times already - no one expected Meghan to investigate herself, but if someone accused my Dad of possessing CSA images I would personally want to know if it was true. So a phone call or two over 8yrs to follow up is not an onerous ask.

She absolutely had a moral duty & a duty of care.
Also as the daughter of TM she had a duty to ensure her brother & sister were notified of the letter as they were his main carers?
Did that happen? Did she request law enforcement to contact her siblings?

Exactly this.

Genius 😂

I wonder if Victoria Ward looked up the basic timeline on Google AI (that is riddled with errors anyway). It doesn’t give the context about the ‘joint’ office starting to separate into two from November 2018. She seems to be confused. In fact a surprising number of royal reporters seem to be confused these days.

It is also interesting that, originally, it was claimed that the letter dates from the summer of 2018 ie before it was known that the two offices were
splitring. So could it be that this wasn’t actually a lapse in memory but was a deliberate attempt to imply that the letter could have been seen by the Cambridges, which was unfortunately scuppered by the Met having a record of the date of the letter 🤔

Pigeons building their nests.

Conflating, mixing up, confusing.

ETA leaping 😄

Interesting theory! The plot thickens!