Piers Morgan has denied that he was aware of phone hacking during his time as editor of the Daily Mirror after a judge ruled that there “can be no doubt” he knew about the practice while helming the newspaper.
The TalkTV presenter said he had “zero knowledge” of the single article about Prince Harry that Friday’s judgment found had involved phone hacking during his editorship.
He reiterated that he had “never hacked a phone” while editor or told anyone else to, adding: “Nobody has provided any actual evidence to prove that I did.”
In a stinging personal attack delivered outside his London home, Morgan said the Duke of Sussex “wouldn’t know truth if it slapped him in his California-tanned face”, and criticised Harry for branding his own family “racists”.
He added that the prince had a “ruthless, greedy and hypocritical enthusiasm” for intruding on the lives of the royal family.
Morgan said: “This is a guy who has repeatedly trashed his family in public for hundreds of millions of dollars even as two of its most senior and respected members were dying – his grandparents. It’s hard to imagine, frankly, more appalling behaviour than that.”
Morgan described those giving evidence in the Duke of Sussex’s high court case as his old enemies, singling out the author Omid Scobie and the journalist Alastair Campbell.
Morgan said he had not been asked to “provide a statement” to the court, and added: “So I wasn’t able to respond to the many false allegations that were spewed about me in court by old foes of mine with an axe to grind, most of which, inexplicably, were not even challenged in my absence by the Mirror Group counsel.
“But I know the judge appears to have believed the evidence of Omid Scobie, who lied about me in his new book and he lied about me in court, and the whole world now knows him to be a deluded fantasist. And he believed the evidence of Alastair Campbell, another proven liar who spun this country into an illegal war.”
In his judgment, handed down on Friday, Mr Justice Fancourt found that “unlawful information-gathering was widespread” at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and the People from 1996 onwards, and that phone hacking started in 1996 and became widespread and habitual from 1998.
The court heard from a number of witnesses that Morgan, who was editor of the Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004, had known about phone hacking and illegal information-gathering.
Fancourt ruled there could “be no doubt” that Morgan and other senior editors and lawyers at the newspaper group had known about phone hacking and other illegal information-gathering.
Morgan, now a presenter on Rupert Murdoch’s TalkTV, has always denied knowingly commissioning or publishing stories based on illegally obtained voicemails.
During the trial, the former Daily Mirror political editor David Seymour told the court that staff at the newspaper had heard Morgan openly discussing how phone hacking operated when at a dinner with executives. Seymour, who worked closely with the editor for a decade, alleged Morgan was “unreliable and boastful, and apt to tell untruths when it suited him”.
In his judgment, the judge noted that Seymour said Morgan was “no fool” and “knew that his journalists were involved in phone hacking”. The judge added: “Mr Seymour struck me as a man of intelligence and integrity. I accept his evidence without hesitation.”
Scobie, best known as the biographer of Harry and Meghan, told the court that Morgan had asked a journalist about how confident they were in a story relating to Kylie Minogue and her then boyfriend James Gooding, and was told that the information had come from voicemails.
Fancourt said that recollection was supported by evidence of an invoice from a private investigator related to obtaining the mobile phone numbers of Minogue and Gooding.
Commenting on the evidence, the judge said: “I found Mr Scobie to be a straightforward and reliable witness and I accept what he said about Mr Morgan’s involvement in the Minogue/Gooding story. No evidence was called by MGN to contradict it.”
Morgan concluded his statement by claiming that Harry was trying to destroy the monarchy. He said: “He [Harry] demands accountability for the press, but refuses to accept any for himself for smearing the royal family, his own family, as a bunch of callous racists without producing a shred of proof to support those disgraceful claims.
“He also says he’s on a mission to reform the media, but it’s become clear his real mission, along with his wife, is to destroy the British monarchy, and I will continue to do whatever I can to stop them.
“Merry Christmas.”
