Did Jason Knauf contribute to Meghan Markle’s miscarriage?

Meghan Markle has been accused of bullying by an assistant who some fans say contributed to her miscarriage.

Prince Harry said on the Netflix show. Harry and Megan, which came out in December 2022, believed Meghan’s miscarriage was caused by the stress of a lawsuit Meghan filed against the UK tabloid Sunday’s mail.

Jason Knauf, who served as Kensington Palace’s communications secretary from 2015 to 2019, submitted evidence in the lawsuit, prompting some on social media to link his involvement to Meghan’s pregnancy loss.

the claim

The Twitter account @ArchewellBaby sought to link Knauf to Meghan’s miscarriage after King Charles III named him in the honors list and Prince William personally conducted the ceremony that made him a lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order.

One tweet viewed 1.2 million times and over 8,000 liked read: “After Prince William secretly accepted millions from Rupert Murdoch as Harry takes him to court, today he honored Jason Knauf who contributed to the abortion Meghan’s spontaneous collaboration with the daily mail.

“Prince Harry dug a grave with his bare hands for his unborn child.”

For context, the tweet’s 1.2 million views is slightly less than double the circulation of Sunday’s mailwhich in March 2023 stood at an average of 659,454 copies per weekly edition, according to the UK media data agency ABC.

The facts

Prince Harry linked Meghan’s miscarriage to Sunday’s mail The lawsuit and Knauf offered evidence to the UK Court of Appeal as part of that case, but the deadlines do not match.

Harry and Meghan’s Netflix series was also clear about the cause of the anxiety and was not related to Knauf’s involvement in the lawsuit.

Meghan first identified the date of her miscarriage in her November 2020 NY Times essay “The losses we share”.

“It was a July [2020] morning that began as ordinary as any other day,” he wrote. “I knew, as I was holding onto my firstborn, that I was losing my secondborn.”

At that time, in the summer of 2020, during a lawsuit in the London High Court, Sunday’s mail had requested to make public the names of five of Meghan’s friends who had defended her from attacks by British tabloids in anonymous interviews with the magazine People.

Meghan was suing the newspaper over the publication of a private letter she sent to her father and lawyers for the outlet argued the story served the public interest because, they said, it corrected an inaccurate account submitted by friends.

On the Netflix show, Meghan said she wanted to keep her friends’ names a secret: “I said ‘absolutely not’ and I felt it was important to protect them the way they try to protect me and that was the same thing.” week we moved to our house in Santa Barbara.

“The first morning we woke up in our new home was when I miscarried,” she added.

Prince Harry told Netflix: “I think my wife had a miscarriage so The mail did. I saw the whole thing.

“Now, do we absolutely know that the miscarriage was caused by that? Of course not.”

Medical experts, including Britain’s National Health Service website, suggest anxiety does not directly lead to increased risk of miscarriagebut it’s not possible to say definitively if Harry is right or wrong.

Still, he didn’t mention Knauf and he didn’t mention Meghan either.

Knauf gave a statement in the lawsuit, but not until 2021, a year later. The first hint that he might have relevant information, according to various statements, did not come until September 2020, two months after Meghan’s miscarriage. For context, Knauf is the same palace staffer who wrote an email in October 2018 accusing the Duchess of harassing two Kensington Palace personal assistants.

Statement of a witness mail on sunday editor Ted Verity, signed December 4, 2020 and viewed by news week described the timeline: “I recently had a meeting with a high-ranking member of the royal house (‘the source’). The meeting took place in person less than three months ago.”

It added: “The information the source gave me included the following: There were several drafts of the Charter (as defined above).

“Jason Knauf, a member of the Kensington Palace communications team, worked on
those erasers with [Meghan]. Many of the adjustments to the drafts were made by electronic means of communication.”

mail on sunday Attorney Keith Mathieson submitted a witness statement in October 2021, also seen by news weekclarifying: “The [Mail on Sunday] tried to contact Mr. Knauf in September 2020 after being told by a source that he (Mr. Knauf) had relevant evidence to give on important aspects of the case.”

He added that the newspaper was “informed by the source that Mr. Knauf had evidence to give that was helpful to the [Mail on Sunday’s] case.”

Knauf’s witness statement was not finally filed until September 16, 2021, despite the fact that his attorney, from the Addleshaw Goddard law firm, had informed the court in December 2020 that he might be willing to testify.

His 2021 witness statement, seen by news weekit read: “As explained in a letter sent on my behalf by Addleshaw Goddard on December 21, 2020, I was prepared to provide evidence on various issues where my previous work had made me aware of relevant events.”

He added: “I have adopted a position of neutrality at all times, offering to provide information that I have been informed is relevant to both parties.”

However, that was five months after Meghan’s miscarriage, which occurred in July 2020.

Knauf handed over private emails and text messages sent between himself and Meghan that showed she had authorized him to provide information to the biography’s authors. find freedomfact that his lawyers had denied in court, as part of the aforementioned lawsuit.

The saga led Meghan to apologize in her own witness statement in November 2021: “I did not have the benefit of viewing these emails and I apologize to the Tribunal for the fact that I did not remember these exchanges at the time. I had absolutely nothing desire or intent to deceive [The Mail on Sunday] or the Court”.

The film crew that makes Netflix docuseries harry and meghan captured Meghan’s distraught reaction upon learning of Knauf’s evidence while in the company of her Archewell Foundation’s former director, Mandana Dayani. Dayani joined Archewell in June 2021, almost a year after the miscarriage.

failure

FAKE.

Jason Knauf gave evidence of Meghan’s lawsuit against Sunday’s mail and his contribution was certainly not well received, as the footage captured by his Netflix documentary suggests.

However, its evidence did not emerge until 2021 and the first indication it could provide was only known to them in private. Sunday’s maileditor, in September 2020, two months after her July 2020 miscarriage. Knauf’s willingness to testify was flagged two more months after that, in December 2020.

Meanwhile, Meghan and Harry’s own account of the anxiety she experienced at the time of her miscarriage relates to the newspaper’s attempts to name their five friends, a matter apparently not involving Knauf or the palace.

FACT CHECK BY NEWSWEEK