Meghan Markle launches court bid to keep friends' names secrets in battle with Mail on Sunday

The Duchess of Sussex is making a dramatic High Court bid to stop five friends who have supported her battle with the British tabloid press from being publicly identified.

Prince Harry’s wife Meghan, 38, is currently locked in a bitter feud with the Mail on Sunday and claims the newspaper invaded her privacy with the publication of a letter to her father Thomas.

In the latest twist in the high-profile dispute, the Duchess is seeking a High Court injunction stopping the newspaper from publishing the names of the five women who spoke anonymously to the US media in her defence last year.

The women’s names are on unpublished court papers in the legal battle, which Meghan insists are “confidential” and should not be made public.

“Associated Newspapers, the owner of The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, is threatening to publish the names of five women - five private citizens - who made a choice on their own to speak anonymously with a U.S. media outlet more than a year ago, to defend me from the bullying behaviour of Britain’s tabloid media”, she wrote in the legal submission disclosed this morning.

“These five women are not on trial, and nor am I. The publisher of the Mail on Sunday is the one on trial. It is this publisher that acted unlawfully and is attempting to evade accountability; to create a circus and distract from the point of this case - that the Mail on Sunday unlawfully published my private letter.”

She accused the newspaper of seeking “clickbait” by disclosing the names, adding: “The Mail on Sunday is playing a media game with real lives.”

The Duchess suffered a setback in May when a judge struck out a “dishonesty” part of her ongoing claim.

The injunction application will now be assessed by a judge.

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