A leading American think tank is trying to determine how Britain’s Prince Harry acquired a U.S. visa after revealing his affinity for drugs such as cocaine, marijuana, “magic mushrooms” and other psychedelics.
The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act to find out if the Duke of Sussex admitted his once-heavy drug use before moving to Montecito, California, from London with his American wife, former actress Meghan Markle in May 2020. (The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation).
“This request is in the public interest in light of the potential revocation of Prince Harry’s visa for illicit substance use and further questions regarding the prince’s drug use and whether he was properly vetted before entering the United States,” Mike Howell, director of Heritage’s Oversight Project, said in a request for documents March 8.
The Oversight Project first submitted the FOIA request Feb. 22. It currently is appealing a denial of the request March 9 by U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement, which along with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is one of two agencies of the Department of Homeland Security that the Oversight Project’s request also names.
If the Department of Homeland Security was aware of Harry’s drug use, it may have given special treatment to the prince because of the couple’s fame, according to the Oversight Project. Usually, the U.S. throws out visa applications from candidates with any history of illicit drug use.
The Immigration and Nationality Act, Howell wrote, “should make him inadmissible to the United States absent the requisite waiver available to non-immigrants.”
The prodigal prince chronicles his drug use in his bestselling memoir “Spare,” published Jan. 10. Harry, now 38, has said that psychedelics “really helped” him to deal with mental health issues following the 1997 death of his mother, Princess Diana, sparking criticism that he glorifies dangerous drug use.
Samuel Dewey, the lawyer representing The Heritage Foundation on the FOIA request, said it seeks documents to help determine whether U.S. officials enforced immigration laws fairly. Dewey said he wants to find out whether the Department of Homeland Security appropriately processed Harry’s paperwork or gave him preferential treatment based on his left-leaning political ideology.
Prince Harry has commercialized every part of his life, and the legitimacy of his U.S. visa is of public interest, Dewey said, so Harry’s visa application should be released to the public.
“He has no reasonable expectation of privacy because he’s commercialized every aspect of his life, which is his decision to make,” Dewey told The Daily Signal. “And the second point is that there is a public interest. Did someone who’s very politically active, aligned with one agenda, get preferential treatment?”
“If a bunch of people are spending a lot of time to give him preferential treatment, they may not be able to spend that time processing an applicant who doesn’t have those issues, who did everything right,” Dewey said.
Media outlets, including CBS News, The Daily Mail, The Daily Beast, and The Daily Mirror, have reported on Harry’s abuse of illicit substances.
“From media reports, it appears this drug use was continuous and substantial, at the very least from the prince’s teenage years into his ‘late 20s,'” Heritage’s Howell said.
Neither Prince Harry nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.
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