Prince Harry’s US visa application papers handed over to judge amid ‘drug-use’ lawsuit

Under US visa rules, applicants are questioned about substance use and previous criminal charges

Prince Harry’s US visa application is being reviewed by a judge following his admissions about his use of drugs in his memoir, Spare.

The Heritage Foundation launched a lawsuit against the fifth in line to the throne to determine whether he lied on his full-time visa application when he moved to California alongside his wife, the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.

Under US visa rules, applicants are questioned about substance use and previous criminal charges.

A filing for the think tank group said: “[The case] comes about in the main because HRH [His Royal Highness] voluntarily—and for immense profit—admitted in writing to the elements of any number of controlled substance violations.”

The Duke of Sussex, 39, admitted in the 2023 book to using a range of substances including cocaine and psychedelics.

He wrote: “Psychedelics did me some good as well. I’d experimented with them over the years, for fun, but now I’d begun to use them therapeutically, medicinally. They didn’t simply allow me to escape reality for a while.”

Prince Harry admitted to taking various drugs in his 2023 memoir. (Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

“They let me redefine reality. Under the influence of these substances, I was able to let go of rigid preconcepts, to see that there was another world beyond my heavily filtered senses, a world that was equally real and doubly beautiful - a world with no red mist.”

The prince moved to the US with his wife after they stepped down as working members of the royal family in January 2020.

Following the review, it will then be decided whether or not to make the documents public.

In June of last year, The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied the think tank’s request to make the documents public, arguing that there was no “public interest in disclosure sufficient to override the subject’s privacy interests”.

Prince Harry now lives in California with his wife and two children. (REUTERS)

The news comes after Donald Trump insisted that he would give Prince Harry no preferential treatment should he be re-elected for a second term in November.

“We’ll have to see if they know something about the drugs, and if he lied they’ll have to take appropriate action,” he told Nigel Farage in a recent interview with GB News.

Lawyers for the US government, however, have argued that even though the Duke claimed to have taken substances in the book, his words “are not proof” that it definitively happened.

The Independent has reached out to Prince Harry’s representatives for comment.