Prince Harry’s visa status and potential application for American citizenship are drawing fresh scrutiny over his claims of illegal drug use. With the Biden administration leaping to his defense in hearings, the case is drawing President Trump’s ire, inviting the sort of spotlight Harry wishes to escape by cutting ties to the Crown.

In ongoing federal court hearings at Washington D.C., this week, lawyers for the Heritage Foundation submitted a recent interview Harry gave to “Good Morning America,” noting that he “discusses potentially seeking United States citizenship,” which revived their calls for transparency.

Heritage filed a Freedom of Information Act request last March for Harry’s visa application, with hearings ongoing. They hoped to discover if he was untruthful on the official forms — a crime — or received a special waiver to live in America.

“Widespread and continuous media coverage has surfaced the question of whether DHS properly admitted the Duke of Sussex,” Heritage argued, “in light of the fact that he has publicly admitted to the essential elements of a number of drug offenses.”

Either Harry lied under oath, “disclosed the full extent of his drug use and received a waiver, or DHS blatantly ignored the law,” the director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at Heritage, Nile Gardiner, told the Sun in July. Other applicants, he pointed out, face deportation for drug use.

After months of what Heritage called DHS “stonewalling,” they went to court, where a federal judge ordered the Biden Administration to “either expedite” their request or deny it. DHS’s senior director, Jimmy Wolfrey, responded that Harry has a “right to privacy” while refusing to “confirm or deny” a waiver exists.

At the heart of Harry’s legal woes are recollections in his best-selling memoir, “Spare,” that he uses marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms, and cocaine. Asked about this last year, he called psychedelics “one of the fundamental parts” of his lifestyle.

The Immigration and Naturalization Act states that visa applicants who “admit to having committed acts that constitute the essential elements of a violation of any law or regulation of a state, the U.S., or a foreign country relating to a controlled substance are inadmissible.”

While Harry’s blue blood may earn him deference back home, American law treats everyone who applies for a visa the same. As Mr. Biden wrote in a memorandum two weeks after his inauguration in 2021, “In a democracy, the public deserves as much transparency as possible.” It’s a pledge he made many times as a candidate.

This week, regardless of touting the public’s right to know in the abstract, the Biden Administration again leapt to Harry’s defense. An assistant United States attorney, John J. Bardo, on behalf of DHS, told the court that what the Duke wrote in “Spare” was not “sworn testimony or proof” of the illegal drug use that denies less-connected foreign nationals entry. 

Mr. Bardo added that no “publicly available information shows that Prince Harry was ever convicted for a drug-related offense,” although the law requires only the act itself, not a conviction. “Just saying something in a book,” Mr. Bardo argued, “doesn’t make it true,” adding that people often write things to “sell books.”

The defense, which Mr. Gardiner called “ridiculous,” invokes a 1994 incident when the Treasury secretary’s chief of staff, Joshua Steiner, repudiated entries in his diary damning to President Clinton in the Whitewater scandal. “It was never Josh’s intention,” Mr. Steiner’s lawyer said ahead of congressional testimony, “that the diary would be a complete and accurate recordation of historical events.” 

On Saturday at CPAC, Mr. Trump said the Biden Administration has been “too gracious” in “protecting Harry” from scrutiny. “I wouldn’t protect him,” the former president said, raising the specter of the royal facing deportation next year. “He would be on his own if it was down to me.”

For now, the White House insists on giving Harry the royal treatment. With Mr. Trump lending his bullhorn to the Heritage case and Mr. Biden taking heat for selective enforcement of immigration law, expect the Duke to find the case weighing heavy on his head — even if it’s one that is unlikely ever to wear the crown.