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In 2020, royal authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand released ‘Finding Freedom’, a biography about Meghan and Prince Harry’s time in the Royal Family. Samantha Markle, sister to the Duchess, has claimed Meghan falsely briefed about her to the authors.
Samantha is set to meet with her legal team on Monday to discuss the possibility of legal action against the Duchess.
According to reports, Samantha is looking to sue the Duchess for “defamation, libel and slander” as well as “breach of privacy”.
She has told reporters she plans on launching legal action in the UK and in the US.
Samantha said: “I’m speaking to one lawyer in England and one in the US as there are different statutory windows and different issues.”
The move comes after Meghan apologised to the Court of Appeal after emails were disclosed, contradicting a claim she had not collaborated with the co-authors of ‘Finding Freedom’.
Jason Knauf, Meghan’s former communications secretary, shared messages between the pair which show the Duchess sent details about Samantha and brother Thomas Jr.
The Duchess asked Mr Knauf to pass the family details to writers Mr Scobie and Ms Durand, also asking her then-aide to say her siblings “dropped out of high school” and that she had “never had a relationship with either of them”.
As an advisory to what should be in the book, Meghan also wrote: “Upon Meghan dating Harry, Samantha changed her name back to Markle and began a career creating stories to sell to the press.
“She had lost custody of all three of her children from different fathers.”
READ MORE: Royal Family LIVE: Meghan accused of distancing herself from Queen
Speaking to the Sunday People, Samantha said she disputes a number of her sister’s claims.
The sisters are said to have not spoken since Meghan met Harry in 2016.
Samantha told the outlet: “I’m looking at suing for defamation in the US.
“In the UK, I’m looking at a breach of privacy and data privacy act breach because the statutory window for defamation is only one year in the UK.
“Jason Knauf is subpoenable and the messages to [him] are evidence she was libelling and slandering me.
“Anything to keep this family quiet was my sister’s motto. It’s horrible.”
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Continuing her remarks, Samantha insisted she “never lost custody of any children”.
She added: “She said I changed my name when she met Harry, but I shared my name-change documents long before.”
Ms Markle, who has MS and uses a wheelchair, also said the family had a “normal life”, but added: “She wanted to make us look estranged and separated to discredit us as that was an excuse to keep everybody away from the wedding.”
Meghan has apologised to the Court of Appeal for forgetting she had communicated with Mr Knauf about ‘Finding Freedom’.
She said: “I apologise to the Court for the fact that I had not remembered these exchanges at the time.
“I had absolutely no wish or intention to mislead the Defendant or the Court.”
The Duchess added that had she known about the emails she would have been “more than happy to refer to them” as “strongly” supportive of her case.
She added: “Not only do I refer to the background information shared with Mr Knauf as ‘reminders’, as much of it was information that he had already requested of me dating back to 2016 when he had asked me for a timeline relating to my family to enable him to engage with the media on enquiries, it is also a far cry from the very detailed personal information that the Defendant alleges that I wanted or permitted to put into the public domain.
“Had I wanted to have my private letter shared in this book, as the defendant falsely claims, this clearly would have been an opportunity to do so.”
The bombshell claims emerged as part of an appeal by the publisher of the Mail On Sunday, who maintain that the publication of a letter written by Meghan to her father, Thomas Markle, was lawful.
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