(Daily Mail) The US government will appear in a federal court next Tuesday to answer questions regarding Prince Harry’s visa application after he admitted using illegal drugs.
The Heritage Foundation, a Washington DC-based conservative think-tank, is suing Joe Biden‘s administration to force officials to release the Duke of Sussex‘s immigration files.
The organisation wants to know how the prince managed to get into the US, considering he subsequently confessed in his bombshell memoir Spare to taking cocaine, cannabis and magic mushrooms.
The Heritage Foundation has said its case will be held in front of a federal judge on June 6 at 2.30pm in courtroom 17 of the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The US government will also be represented.
The news was revealed by Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, who also said it would be open to the press.
A decision to unseal immigration records could have implications for Harry’s status in the US given an admission of drug use can see a visa application rejected.
Harry and Meghan at the Ms Foundation Women of Vision Awards in New York on May 16
The Heritage Foundation has said the case will be held in front of a US federal judge on June 6
The Heritage Foundation is aiming to establish whether the duke’s drug revelations in Spare were also mentioned in his visa application.
The appeal to the court regarding the case – which was covered by DailyMail.com earlier this month – comes after the group failed to make the application public using freedom of information laws in March.
In Spare, Harry revealed that he first took cocaine on a shooting weekend at age 17. He did a ‘few more lines’ on other occasions.
He also admitted to hallucinating during a celebrity-filled event in California and smoking cannabis after his first date with Meghan.
And the duke spoke about his ‘positive’ experience of psychedelic drug ayahuasca, saying it ‘brought me a sense of relaxation, release, comfort, a lightness that I managed to hold on to for a period of time’.
Harry made the comments in an interview with therapist Dr Gabor Maté, an outspoken supporter of decriminalising drugs who has allegedly used Amazonian plant ayahuasca to treat patients suffering from mental illness.
Harry told him: ‘(Cocaine) didn’t do anything for me, it was more a social thing and gave me a sense of belonging for sure, I think it probably also made me feel different to the way I was feeling, which was kind of the point.
‘Marijuana is different, that actually really did help me.’
Under US law, anyone who admits to past abuse of illegal narcotics is generally denied entry to the country.
Applicants for a visa to live and work in America have to tick a box to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a question on past drug use. It reads: ‘Are you or have you ever been a drug abuser or addict?’
Prince Harry at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York on May 16 for the Ms Foundation event
