Guilty Pleasures
By Associated Press
Judge tells Prince Harry to explain how communications with ghostwriter were destroyed
LONDON | Prince Harry was hit with a hefty legal bill Thursday and ordered to explain how communications with the ghostwriter of his memoir were destroyed after an attorney for The Sun tabloid accused him of engaging in “shocking” obfuscation in his lawsuit claiming the newspaper violated his privacy by unlawfully snooping on him.
Judge Timothy Fancourt said it was troubling that all communications between the Duke of Sussex and writer J.R. Moehringer, along with all drafts of the best-selling “Spare,” were destroyed.
Attorney Anthony Hudson said at the High Court that Harry had created an “obstacle course” to providing documents that should be disclosed in litigation and that “we’ve had to drag those out of the claimant kicking and screaming.”
News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun, was awarded $167,000 in legal costs for largely prevailing in a request to have more searches undertaken for data on Harry’s laptop and any text messages and chats on WhatsApp and Signal that could be helpful to the defense.
Harry’s lawyer said News Group was engaging in a “classic fishing expedition” for documents it should have sought sooner for a trial scheduled in January.
“NGN’s tactical and sluggish approach to disclosure wholly undermines the deliberately sensational assertion that the claimant (Harry) has not properly carried out the disclosure exercise,” attorney David Sherborne said in court papers. “This is untrue. In fact, the claimant has already made clear that he has conducted extensive searches, going above and beyond his obligations.”
The hearing is the latest in Harry’s battles against Britain’s biggest tabloids over allegations they hacked his phone and hired private investigators who used unlawful measures to dig up dirt on him.
Harry is one of dozens of claimants, which had included actor Hugh Grant, alleging that between 1994 and 2016, News Group journalists and investigators they hired violated their privacy by intercepting voicemails, tapping phones, bugging cars and using deception to access confidential information.
The litigation grew out of a phone hacking scandal that erupted in 2011 at NGN’s News of the World, which closed its doors as a result.
NGN issued an unreserved apology to victims of voicemail interception by the News of the World. NGN said it has settled 1,300 claims for its newspapers, though The Sun has never accepted liability.
The Sun won a partial victory last year when Fancourt tossed out Harry’s phone hacking allegations because he waited too long to bring the case. He ruled that Harry should have been aware of the scandal that engulfed the News of the World and, therefore, could have brought the lawsuit within the six-year time limitation.
The newspaper wants to use the time limitation defense at trial and is seeking communications that could show Harry was aware of allegations newspapers employed other illegal methods of unearthing information before 2013 — six years before he sued in 2019.
Fancourt said that older communications and even ones up to the 2023 publication of his memoir could provide evidence that he was aware of the unlawful information gathering years earlier.
He ordered Harry, who was not in court, to provide a witness statement explaining what happened to communications with Moehringer.
Sherborne said Harry had not used text or messaging apps to discuss unlawful information gathering.
But Fancourt said that might be contradicted because Moehringer wrote in a New Yorker article that he and Harry were “texting around the clock.”
Fancourt recently ruled that Harry couldn’t expand his lawsuit to add allegations that Rupert Murdoch, who was chief executive of the company that controlled NGN, was part of an effort to conceal and destroy evidence of unlawful activity.
Bill Cobbs, prolific and sage character actor, dies at 90
NEW YORK | Bill Cobbs, the veteran character actor who became a ubiquitous and sage screen presence as an older man, has died. He was 90.
Cobbs died Tuesday at his home in the Inland Empire, California, surrounded by family and friends, his publicist Chuck I. Jones said. Natural causes is the likely cause of death, Jones said.
A Cleveland native, Cobbs acted in such films as “The Hudsucker Proxy,” “The Bodyguard” and “Night at the Museum.” He made his first big-screen appearance in a fleeting role in 1974’s “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.” He became a lifelong actor with some 200 film and TV credits. The lion share of those came in his 50s, 60s, and 70s, as filmmakers and TV producers turned to him again and again to imbue small but pivotal parts with a wizened and worn soulfulness.
Cobbs appeared on television shows including “The Sopranos,” “The West Wing,” “Sesame Street” and “Good Times.” He was Whitney Houston’s manager in “The Bodyguard” (1992), the mystical clock man of the Coen brothers’ “The Hudsucker Proxy” (1994) and the doctor of John Sayles’ “Sunshine State” (2002). He played the coach in “Air Bud” (1997), the security guard in “Night at the Museum” (2006) and the father on “The Gregory Hines Show.”
Cobbs rarely got the kinds of major parts that stand out and win awards. Instead, Cobbs was a familiar and memorable everyman who left an impression on audiences, regardless of screen time. He won a Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding limited performance in a daytime program for the series “Dino Dana” in 2020.
Wendell Pierce, who acted alongside Cobbs in “I’ll Fly Away” and “The Gregory Hines Show,” remembered Cobbs as “a father figure, a griot, an iconic artist that mentored me by the way he led his life as an actor,” he wrote on the social media platform X.
Wilbert Francisco Cobbs, born June 16, 1934, served eight years in the U.S. Air Force after graduating high school in Cleveland. In the years after his service, Cobbs sold cars. One day, a customer asked him if he wanted to act in a play. Cobbs first appeared on stage in 1969. He began to act in Cleveland theater and later moved to New York where he joined the Negro Ensemble Company, acting alongside Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee.
Cobbs later said acting resonated with him as a way to express the human condition, in particular during the Civil Rights Movement in the late ‘60s.
“To be an artist, you have to have a sense of giving,” Cobbs said in a 2004 interview. “Art is somewhat of a prayer, isn’t it? We respond to what we see around us and what we feel and how things affect us mentally and spiritually.”
Reality show winner gets ten years for enticing underage girl
to cross state lines for sex
CAMDEN, N.J. | A former winner of the “American Ninja Warrior” TV reality show has been sentenced to just over 10 years in federal prison for enticing an underage girl to travel across state lines so they could have sex.
Andrew Drechsel, 35, of Saint Cloud, Florida, will also have to serve 15 years of supervised release once he completes his prison term and must pay the victim $100,000 in restitution under the 121-month sentence imposed Wednesday in Camden. Drechsel pleaded guilty to both the enticement charge and a charge of possessing child sex abuse material in June 2023.
Drechsel, who won season 11 of the NBC television show in 2019, was living in Hamden, Connecticut, at that time, while the victim lived in New Jersey. The encounters between him and the girl took place between 2014 and 2019, prosecutors said, with the girl sometimes going to Connecticut and Drechsel going to New Jersey at other times.
Drechsel told authorities he met the victim in 2014 after an “American Ninja Warrior” contestant event, where they exchanged numbers and began texting. She was 14 at the time; he was in his mid-20s.
Killer Mike will likely avoid charges after Grammys arrest
LOS ANGELES | Killer Mike is expected to avoid charges over a physical altercation that led to his arrest at the Grammys earlier this year after the rapper recently completed community service.
The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office said in a statement Thursday that Mike “successfully completed the office’s hearing process, including a community service requirement that was imposed.” The rapper was escorted in handcuffs by police at Crypto.com Arena in February and detained on suspicion of a misdemeanor offense.
Court documents shows Mike, whose real name is Michael Render, was never charged over the incident. His representatives did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
In some instances, Los Angeles city prosecutors can opt to resolve an incident without filing misdemeanor charges if a person completes certain conditions.
Mike said an “over-zealous” security guard contributed to the altercation that occurred in the joyous moments after he won three awards at the Grammys’ Premiere Ceremony. It was his first Grammy in more than two decades.
Mike’s first win came after he won for best rap performance for “Scientists & Engineers,” which also took home best rap song. The single features Andre 3000, Future and Eryn Allen Kane.
He also won best rap album for “Michael.”
When he collected his third award, the Atlanta-based rapper shouted out, “Sweep! Atlanta, it’s a sweep!”
Mike’s last Grammy came in 2003 when he won for “The Whole World” for best rap performance by a duo or group.
—From AP reports
