Donald Trump‘s election victory is a nightmare for Prince Harry after the new US president previously warned the royal he would get no special privileges in America.

Mr Trump has lambasted the Duke of Sussex since he left Britain in 2020, criticising him for the ‘unforgiveable betrayal’ of his late grandmother Queen Elizabeth II.

He also suggested in March that Harry – who lives in Montecito, California – could be deported from the US if his drug use was not declared on his visa application.It comes as an American think-tank is trying to reopen its case to get Harry’s secret visa application made public after he admitted taking drugs in his memoir.

 

Royal experts even suggested the Sussexes should think of a ‘backup plan’ for where they might live should Mr Trump choose to force Harry out – with one option being a holiday home they bought in Portugal, as revealed by the Daily Mail last month.

Back in September 2020, soon after Harry and his wife Meghan Markle had moved to the US, the couple urged American voters to ‘reject hate speech, misinformation and online negativity’ in that year’s election which was eventually won by Joe Biden.

While the Sussexes did not endorse a candidate, the wording of their video message prompted accusations that they were referring to Mr Trump and had therefore breached UK protocol keeping members of the Royal Family political neutrality.

Mr Trump was then asked during a White House briefing for his reaction to their comments, and said: ‘I’m not a fan of hers (Meghan) and I would say this, and she probably has heard that. But I wish a lot of luck to Harry, cause he’s going to need it.’

In more recent months, Mr Trump has spoken about the Heritage Foundation’s long-running case to get Harry’s secret visa application made public.

The think tank has questioned why the Duke was allowed into the US with Meghan in 2020 following his reference to taking cocaine, marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms in his book Spare which came out in January 2023.

The conservative Washington DC group brought a lawsuit against the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) after a Freedom of Information request was rejected.

Heritage claimed Harry’s document was of ‘immense public interest’ but lost the case on September 23 after judge Carl Nichols ruled it should remain private.

Then, on October 22, Heritage submitted a new court filing as it tries to reopen the case because it was not allowed to see private submissions to the judge by the Biden administration.

Before a ruling was made in the case, Mr Trump said in February that Harry would be ‘on his own’ if he won the November election and claimed the Duke had ‘betrayed the Queen’.

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he also said the Biden administration had been ‘too gracious’ to Harry since he moved to the US.

Mr Trump told the Daily Express: ‘I wouldn’t protect him. He betrayed the Queen. That’s unforgivable. He would be on his own if it was down to me.’

Then in March, Nigel Farage asked Mr Trump on GB News whether Harry should receive any ‘special privileges’ if authorities determined that he lied on his visa application.

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Donald Trump, Queen Elizabeth II, Melania Trump, Charles and Camilla at the banquet in 2019

Mr Trump responded: ‘No. We’ll have to see if they know something about the drugs, and if he lied they’ll have to take appropriate action.’

 

Asked whether ‘appropriate action’ meant the Duke ‘not staying in America,’ Mr Trump said: ‘Oh I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me. You just have to tell me. You would have thought they would have known this a long time ago.’

The Heritage case was brought because visa applicants must by law declare whether they have taken drugs.

Failure to do so can lead to deportation, and Heritage wanted the US Government to release the records to see what Harry said about drug usage.

However, Mr Trump’s son Eric Trump suggested last week in an interview with MailOnline that Harry’s US visa is safe because ‘no one cares’ about the Duke or his ‘unpopular’ wife Meghan.

Eric told MailOnline that Mr Trump ‘loved the Queen’ and lamented how Harry had done a ‘huge detriment’ to the royal family after leaving the UK.

But he added: ‘I don’t give a damn if he did drugs. It means nothing. I can tell you that our father and our entire family has tremendous respect for the monarchy.’

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Queen Elizabeth II walks with Donald Trump at Buckingham Palace for the banquet in 2019

Eric also said: ‘Truthfully I don’t give a damn about Prince Harry and I don’t think this country does either. My father loved the Queen and I think the monarchy is an incredibly beautiful thing.’

 

He also paid tribute to Elizabeth II for how she hosted the Trump family at Buckingham Palace in June 2019, saying: ‘The late Queen was amazing. The way she welcomed my father with open arms was, like, beyond.’

Eric told how his father is also fond of King Charles III and that the monarch had previously visited Mar-a-Lago, the Trump estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

He also praised Prince William and Kate, stating that the future king had never ‘made a misstep’ while his wife ‘conducts herself so incredibly well and has been such a rock in the next generation of the family’.

But Eric said Harry let his family down when he stepped down as a senior royal and moved to the US, adding: ‘You look at this one black sheep who doesn’t exactly know where he is, led by a wife that is pretty unpopular, both here and over where you are.’

He added that Harry appeared to ‘have gone off the deep end and it’s sad to watch.’

Last month, royal expert Hugo Vickers said the Sussexes’ property in Alentejo, Portugal, would be a good ‘backup plan’ for the couple if Mr Trump decides to kick Harry out of the US.

Mr Vickers told The Sun: ‘I think it’s very wise to take all the possibilities into account. Looking at it from the outside, it makes perfect sense that they should have a backup plan.

But Meghan is very US-based and [Harry being kicked out] would be a problem for them. Because she presumably wouldn’t be necessarily booted out. She would at least keep a base in America, because that’s where she operates more.’

In February, Harry raised the prospect of US citizenship when speaking with ABC’s Good Morning America – saying he had considered the idea but it was ‘not a high priority.

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Harry talked about using drugs in his memoir Spare which was released in January 2023

The royal said he was ‘loving’ his new life in America so much he may take the citizenship test – even though doing so would force him to relinquish his royal titles.

‘It’s amazing, I love every single day,’ he said of his life in California .

When asked what would prevent him from becoming a US citizen, he added: ‘I have no idea. I’m here standing here with these guys. American citizenship is a thought that has crossed my mind but not a high priority for me.’

As for the visa row, the new 13-page motion submitted by Heritage last month attempts to ‘vacate’ the previous ruling on Harry’s application and unseal private correspondence between the DHS and the judge, reported Newsweek .

The judge’s order was redacted to protect the Duke’s privacy, but Heritage claimed this ‘severely compromises’ its ability to ‘prepare arguments on appeal’.

Parts of the judgment that were redacted included facts Harry has not disclosed publicly in relation to his immigration status and records, and what was contained in his visa application.

But Heritage lawyers said there was ‘ample evidence of agency bad faith’, saying their legal team was ‘not blind to the fact that they have brought a unique case that is fraught with these complexities’.

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Judge Carl Nichols ordered the Department of Homeland Security to provide more information about why his immigration details should be kept secret in March

They added that the Heritage lawyers ‘simply submit that the way forward taken by the court does not comport with our adversarial system’.

In the ruling on September 23, Judge Nichols said ‘the public does not have a strong interest in disclosure of the Duke’s immigration records’.

His judgment added: ‘Like any foreign national, the duke has a legitimate privacy interest in his immigration status.

‘And the Duke’s public statements about his travel and drug use did not disclose, and therefore did not eliminate his interest in keeping private, specific information regarding his immigration status, applications, or other materials.’

Judge Nichols went on to say the public’s interest in disclosure of Harry’s immigration records is ‘outweighed by the Duke’s privacy interest’.

He said: ‘Public disclosure of records about a single admission of a foreign national in the circumstances described above would provide the public, at best, limited information about the department’s general policy in admitting aliens.

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Separately, the Heritage Foundation last month relea