in some national media outlets. In May 2020, the court dismissed claims of the tabloid's alleged dishonesty and malice, as they were deemed either vague or irrelevant to the case. In February 2021, the High Court of Justice found in summary judgment that ANL's Mail on Sunday had invaded Meghan's privacy by publishing the letter, and she won her claim for "misuse of private information and copyright infringement" in May 2021. She was given a £450,000 down payment on her £1.5 million legal fees as an interim payment, and pursuant to copyright law, her legal team asked for a front-page statement by The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline to acknowledge her legal victory. The Court of Appeal granted ANL permission to appeal against the ruling. The appeal was subsequently launched by ANL in November 2021. Meghan and Harry's former communications secretary Jason Knauf—who had previously denied co-authoring the letter with Meghan—gave a statement to the court of appeal, mentioning that Meghan gave him briefing points to share with Finding Freedoms authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, and that Prince Harry welcomed the suggestion that they should conceal their involvement, while they both discussed the book "on a routine basis". ANL had previously applied to use the book in their defense, arguing that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had "co-operated with the authors of the recently published book Finding Freedom to put out their version of certain events". Knauf also revealed that Meghan wondered whether she should refer to her father as "daddy" in the letter, as she believed "in the unfortunate event that it leaked, it would pull at the heartstrings". Meghan subsequently apologized to the court for not remembering the emails earlier and stated she "had absolutely no wish or intention to mislead the defendant or the court", adding that the "extent of the information" Knauf shared with the book's authors was "unknown" to her and her exchanges with Knauf were "a far cry from the very detailed personal information that the defendant alleges that I wanted or permitted to put into the public domain". She also stated in her witness statement that she was "unable to retrieve any text messages with Mr Knauf" due to "an automatic deletion system" that had been installed on her devices in 2016 for security reasons. In December 2021, three senior appeal judges upheld the judgement of the High Court against ANL,