Bizarre plot to save Rupert Murdoch and his sidekick Rebekah Brooks from prosecution revealed to High Court
By Graham Johnson
Publisher, Yellow Press
Editor, Byline Investigates & Expose News
The new chief executive of the Washington Post Will Lewis conspired to invent a fake alibi in a bid to cover his back for criminally deleting millions of Rupert Murdoch’s emails, the High Court has heard.
Lewis was allegedly trying to destroy evidence of phone hacking to save Murdoch and his top executive Rebekah Brooks from police prosecution.
London’s Metropolitan Police were already investigating the company, at the height of the phone hacking scandal in 2011, and had instructed the bosses to preserve the evidence, including emails.
So, Lewis and the company IT boss Paul Cheesbrough were allegedly looking for a plausible excuse to delete the emails behind the backs of investigating officers.
According to High Court documents, Lewis, Cheesbrough and Brooks hit on the idea of making a trumped-up ‘false security threat.’
Astonishingly, they came up with notion of blaming Britain’s former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The newspaper executives claimed that Gordon Brown – along with senior Labour politician Tom Watson – were plotting to steal electronic information from the databases of The Sun and News of the World, in order to further their political ambitions to bring Murdoch down.
Gordon Brown has dismissed the allegations as preposterous, and, in a witness statement, Tom Watson has denied being involved.
The explosive claims have been made in Prince Harry’s case against The Sun newspaper at the High Court in London.
Tom Watson, now a Labour peer, has also launched a claim and was present at the hearing in the Rolls Building, where his lawyers were asking for more disclosure.
News Group Newspapers, Murdoch’s newspaper publishing wing in Britain, deny or do not admit the allegations.
More follows.
