KATE EMERY: Kate Middleton's photo drama proves the cover-up is often worse than the crime

It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.

It’s a sentiment associated with the Watergate scandal that ousted US president Richard Nixon after efforts to conceal his administration’s role in a break-in at the Democrats’ HQ was exposed by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford if I have my history right.

Sometimes, the cover-up is bad optics.

Last month, Liberal MP Steve Thomas received a demotion after first concealing from Liberal leader Libby Mettam and later playing down to a journalist his dealings with WA politics’ own Voldemort, Brian Burke. Mr Thomas maintains a role in the shadow ministry on the condition that he works on his depulso-banishing charm.

Sometimes, the cover-up compounds the offence.

Would former Labor MP Barry Urban have been sent to jail in 2021 if he hadn’t lied to a parliamentary committee about allegations over what turned out to be decades of lies?

Sometimes, the cover-up is the crime itself.

Lifestyle guru Martha Stewart wasn’t jailed for insider trading but for lying about it.

Fellow Apprentice alum Donald Trump will face court next month not for allegedly paying off adult entertainer Stormy Daniels but for allegedly falsifying business records to cover it up.

The charge carries a maximum prison sentence of four years, so Mr Trump might want to contact Stewart now for her tips on making toilet wine and hosting a garden party for 12 in the exercise yard.

And sometimes the cover-up is so woefully mishandled you can only gape at the PR equivalent of a five-car pile-up into the back of a manure truck. Sitting in the car, wipers trying desperately to clear poo from the windscreen, is the alive and well (probably) Princess of Wales Catherine Middleton.

Nobody knows what Kate was attempting to cover up when she released a family portrait that was later deemed to have been excessively manipulated. Was it a bad skin day or imperfect smiles from her kids that had Kate reaching for Photoshop? Or has she been killed and secretly replaced by her sister, Pippa Middleton, as per some of the more insane conspiracy theories?

The photo, which Kate — or whoever manages her Instagram — admitted to editing, was seen as an attempt to quell conspiracy theories about her absence after abdominal surgery: the PR equivalent of the proof-of-life required by the family of kidnap victims before they hand over the sack with the dollar sign.

Kate has committed no crime unless you’re under 30 and consider wearing skinny jeans in public a fashion crime. But in using Photoshop to cover up something, she has fallen into the trap that has ensnared so many others.

As this column goes to print, another photo of Kate is in circulation: a blurry photo of her in a car, head turned away from the camera, features barely discernible through the window’s reflection.

So that will definitely 100 per cent put an end to the matter.