Piers Morgan, Paul Burrell react at Prince Harry's swipe in court testimony

Piers Morgan was nonchalant when asked about Prince Harry's accusation against him during his testimony in London's High Court on Tuesday, while Paul Burrell has hit out at the royal over claims he profited from Princess Diana's personal belongings.

In his witness statement released to the court and obtained by Newsweek, the Duke of Sussex alleged that the former "Good Morning Britain" host subjected him and his wife Meghan Markle "to a barrage of horrific personal attacks and intimidation" as a "consequence" of him bringing his allegations against Mirror Group Newspapers to court.

Morgan previously worked as an editor for the Daily Mirror during which Prince Harry claimed stories published about him were illegally obtained including via phone hacking. The 38-year-old said of Morgan's attack on him and his wife, "Presumably in retaliation and in the hope that I will back down, before being able to hold him properly accountable for his unlawful activity towards both me and my mother during his editorship."

The duke referenced articles about Princes Diana he alleged contained information obtained by Morgan and his "band of journalists" by listening to her "private and sensitive messages," which he said leaves him feeling "physically sick and even more determined to hold those responsible, including Morgan, accountable for their vile and entirely unjustified behaviour."

On Tuesday evening, Morgan was asked by a Sky News reporter waiting outside his West London home about the duke's claims against him. He said he "didn't see" Prince Harry's witness statement accusations and when told the royal called him "vile," he responded, "I wish him luck with his privacy campaign and I look forward to reading it in his next book."

During his court testimony, the former working royal also talked about Princess Diana's former butler when quizzed over a tabloid story in 2003 about his disagreement with Prince William over meeting Burrell in person to try to stop him from releasing any more exposés about their mother after his tell-all memoir, in which he wrote about his life with the late princess and included her romantic encounters.

Prince Harry said of the tabloid story, it "accurately sets out the position that my brother was open to fixing a meeting with Paul to discuss his ongoing exposés about our mother, however, I had made up my mind about the kind of person I thought Paul was and was firmly against meeting him at this point in my life. To the best of my recollection, I do not believe a meeting went ahead in 2003."

He added, "Both my brother and I had very strong feelings about how indiscrete Paul had proven to be with the way he had sold our mother's possessions and how he had given numerous interviews about her. We firmly believed that she would have expected some privacy in death, especially from someone she had trusted, and we were so upset at the way he was behaving—I didn't want to hear his reasons for it. Therefore, our disagreement over how to handle the situation going forward was not something I wanted splashed across the Defendant's newspapers."

The duke admitted that a quote used in the article to describe the former royal aide as a "two-face s*** was a term that he "would have used" to describe him. In response, Burrell argued that Prince Harry "knows full well" that he has "always protected" and "loved and cared" for Princess Diana and for him and Prince William when they were children.

He told GB News, "So really I don't know what tangent he's gone off at here because it is not true what he's saying in court." Burrell said he has "tried 20 years to get away from what happened" to him in 2002 when he was tried for theft after a raid that found Princess Diana's belongings in his home.

He said he was "put through a judicial system blamed for doing something" he "didn't do." But Queen Elizabeth II, via Buckingham Palace, put out a statement clearing him from the trial after police found no evidence to prove that he had been stealing from the princess.

Burrel told Prince Harry, "Harry, you know full well that that court case collapsed. You know your grandmother intervened in that court case. She had vital evidence, yes, which saved me." The ex-royal butler said he wants the duke to "apologise and say sorry" for his defamatory claims against him.