Meghan Markle's Half-Brother Tom Markle Said She Ignored Him

In an exclusive interview with In Touch, Meghan Markle’s half-brother, Tom Markle Jr. reveals that she ignored his plea for help – whose life has been “under a microscope” since Prince Harry and Meghan announced their engagement in November. Tom, 51, tells In Touch that he and his lawyer have been going back and forth with the palace, trying in vain to connect with the future royal and asking for her help dealing with the international scrutiny.

“My lawyer had a phone meeting with her lawyer, and he emailed me some of [Meghan’s] direct words. She said, ‘That’s distant family and I don’t know those people.’ That’s pretty harsh,” Tom tells In Touch, calling it “a slap in the face” and “below the belt.”

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Tom finds it “ridiculous” that Meghan thinks of him as a stranger. “I spent a lot of time with her growing up,” explains Tom, who was 14 and living with his dad, now 73, and Thomas Markle Sr.’s then-wife, Doria Ragland, 61, when Meghan was born.

In the past year, Tom says, he’s lost work and has had to move three times because of all the interest in Meghan. “There was a time where people were following me around at work, taking pictures and posting horrible stories about me and my family saying I’m a white supremacist, a drug addict and a dealer, all this crap that just isn’t true,” he explains.

“My attorney was reaching out to her people and the palace to basically [help us] try to get a retraction for all these false stories in [countries] where there are different laws,” he tells In Touch. But despite his lawyer’s pleas for the palace to “take some action to protect him,” emails show that a rep from Harry’s office simply told him, “I am so sorry to hear you have been having a tough time with the media.”