Another helping of witches’ brew…

Once again it is necessary to repeat our earlier story about use of the cliché ‘witch-hunt’, after it was wheeled out by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson when he announced his shock resignation from the House of Commons (HoC).

In fact he excelled himself because he used this hoary phrase as well as another cliché (‘kangaroo court’), and as a former journalist he might have been expected to know better.

People should be reminded of the background.

Mr Johnson was investigated by the all-party HoC Privileges Committee (PC) (which has a Conservative majority) over whether he had lied to the house about ‘partygate’, with his statements claiming all COVID rules and guidance were followed by Number 10 during lockdown gatherings.

Their report has provided more evidence of Mr Johnson’s duplicitousness.

Under the front page headline, “Ex-PM was not told he had obeyed Covid rules”, The Times reported yesterday: “…the privileges committee, a parliamentary standards body that has investigated Johnson, has concluded that officials did not advise him that social-distancing guidelines had been followed…”.

His allies have claimed that Rishi Sunak ‘encouraged’ the committee to find him in contempt of parliament, but when Mr Johnson actually saw what the MPs had written he knew the game was up. 

Just before he decided to go, Mr Johnson had received an email from the PC, which included a letter from the Chair, Labour’s Harriet Harman, and said that he had been found guilty of a deliberate contempt.

His lawyer later got the full report, which showed that Mr Johnson had lied under oath to the committee. 

Mr Johnson was told his suspension would “significantly exceed” 10 days – the threshold for turning to the electorate, meaning that he would have to stand down as an MP. 

He reportedly said: “I’m fucked”.

As Sky has put it: “Ultimately, it looks like he decided to jump before he was pushed”.

However afterwards he tried to turn the attention on to the MPs who were looking into what happened, and alleged that HE was the one who was being mistreated.

In a combative 1,000 word statement, Mr Johnson declared (among many other things) that:

• A “tiny handful of people” were using their investigation to “drive him out” of Parliament.

• MPs on the PC hadn’t “produced a shred of evidence” to suggest he misled the Commons – and their report was “riddled with inaccuracies and reeks of prejudice”.

• The committee was a “kangaroo court” determined to find him guilty.

• A “witch hunt” was under way to “take revenge for Brexit” and reverse the referendum result.

Yet Mr Johnson is not the first to have used the words ‘kangaroo court’ and ‘witch-hunt’, nor is he likely to be the last.

For example we can expect them to come out before the court case accusing Donald Trump of taking top secret state documents to his Florida home.

Mr Trump is a regular user of the phrase as well. 

The details of the indictment against him were unsealed in a 49-page document, and the allegations were stunning.

Mr Trump, prosecutors said, stored sensitive documents—including those concerning matters of national security—in boxes in a remarkably haphazard and irresponsible way.

They were found strewn in various corners of Mar-a-Lago, including a shower stall, a bathroom, an office, a bedroom and—most ostentatiously—the stage of a ballroom “in which events and gatherings took place”.

Mr Trump’s lawyers had maintained the documents were all held in a storage room.

Here, then, is The Eye’s earlier piece about the continual use of the phrase ‘witch-hunt’ by Mr Trump, Mr Johnson, and others:

 

 

During 23 years with The BBC, and 39 years in journalism (when he was trained to use simple language, avoiding jargon), writing or speaking correct words have always been central, and here our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry looks at how the cllché “witch-hunt” is being increasingly used, and has been deployed several times by Donald Trump, including after a jury found that he had sexually assaulted a journalist. 

Previously he has described how he was helped to break into the South Wales Echo office car when he was a cub reporter, recalled his early career as a journalist, the importance of experience in the job, and made clear that the ‘calls’ to emergency services as well as court cases are central to any media operation.

He has also explored how poorly paid most journalism is when trainee reporters had to live in squalid flats, the vital role of expenses, and about one of his most important stories on the now-scrapped 53 year-old BBC Cymru Wales (BBC CW) TV Current Affairs series, Week In Week Out (WIWO), which won an award even after it was axed, long after his career really took off.

Phil has explained too how crucial it is actually to speak to people, the virtue of speed as well as accuracy, why knowledge of ‘history’ is vital, how certain material was removed from TV Current Affairs programmes when secret cameras had to be used, and some of those he has interviewed.

Earlier he disclosed why investigative journalism is needed now more than ever although others have different opinions, and how information from trusted sources is crucial.

 

 

It’s been wheeled out yet AGAIN!

This time (as he has done several times in the past) it is by the controversial former US President Donald Trump, after he was found by a jury to have sexually abused a writer. It was also decided that he had defamed E Jean Carroll (but the civil trial rejected her claim she was raped during the encounter), and he must pay the former Elle magazine advice columnist $5 million (£4 million) in damages. Yet, as he is wont to do, he lashed out on his ‘Truth Social’ site, calling the outcome “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time” and a “disgrace”.

Mr Trump, though, (along with others) has an impressive record of using this phrase, and has deployed it to defend himself during many of the troubles he now faces.

For example in the bi-partisan House of Representatives investigation into the riot attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which five people died (some say 10), it was revealed that Mr Trump engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy”, but he attacked the results of their 18-month long inquiry, by saying on his Truth Social platform: “The highly partisan Unselect Committee Report purposely fails to mention the failure of Pelosi to heed my recommendation for troops to be used in DC, show the “Peacefully and Patrioticly” words I used, or study the reason for the protest, Election Fraud. WITCH HUNT!”.

Use of this term, however, may raise eye brows in the context of what happened.  The January 6 committee report into the rampage at the Capitol building, was based on interviews with more than 1,000 witnesses, it followed 10 hearings and resulted in millions of pages of documents. The politicians who wrote it, concluded that the evidence “has led to an overriding and straightforward conclusion: the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him”.

But it has not been the only time Mr Trump has wielded this platitude. A grand jury in New York found two Trump Organization companies guilty of multiple charges of tax fraud, and falsifying business records connected with a 15-year scheme to defraud authorities by failing to report and pay taxes on compensation for top executives. The Trump Corporation and Trump Payroll Corporation were found guilty on all charges they faced.

Mr Trump was mentioned repeatedly during the trial by prosecutors about his connection to the benefits doled out to certain executives, including company-funded apartments, car leases and personal expenses.

At the end of the case, his company was fined $1.6 million (£1.3 million), and the Trump Corporation was fined $810,000 (£662,976), with Trump Payroll Corporation being fined $800,000 (£654,792). The amount imposed by Judge Juan Manuel Merchan was the maximum allowed by law. He ordered payment in full within 14 days, when he had been asked for 30 days.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said the fines constituted “a fraction of the revenue” of the Trump Organization and that the project was “far-reaching and brazen”. During a four-week trial, prosecutors said Mr Trump himself had signed bonus cheques, as well as on the lease for an executive’s luxury Manhattan apartment, and private school tuition for the Chief Financial Officer’s (CFO’s) grandchildren.

But all of this was, of course, (like many of the other controversies to swirl around Mr Trump), part of “a witch-hunt” against him.

He is also under scrutiny by federal and state prosecutors for his handling of classified documents, as well as over the accuracy of the Trump Organization’s business records and financial statements. He is, too, facing a $250 million civil lawsuit from the New York attorney general alleging that he and his adult children were involved in a decade-long fraud. However it does not look good for Mr Trump, as a judge rejected as “absurd” his attempt to dismiss one of the lawsuits.

However Mr Trump is not alone, and the phrase is being used ever more frequently today, yet I would advise onlookers that its use means the accusation is probably true!

Another instance is how it was used by the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, against critics who have condemned parties which were held in Number 10 or the garden, while everyone else was governed by lockdown rules.

It was screamed out in the row between Brussels and Warsaw, after Poland’s top court rejected the supremacy of EU laws, in a country where the nationalist Law and Justice party rules.

Polish judges had opposed the basic principle of EU legal primacy – a core pillar of the bloc’s rules order that all member states sign up to on joining. They repudiated significant articles of the EU treaties, including that member states will take “appropriate measures” to fulfil their obligations under EU law, and politicians as well as legal scholars have described the move as a “legal Polexit” which jeopardises Poland’s access to EU funds, along with the rights of its largely pro-EU population. But after the far-right populist French politician, Marine Le Pen, met Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, when he was hauled over the coals by his fellow leaders for this, she accused the EU of conducting a “witch-hunt” against Poland using “unacceptable blackmail”.

This was as the contentious Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu had been put on trial for alleged corruption, when he had also accused his detractors of orchestrating a politically motivated “witch-hunt” against him.

Mr Netanyahu denied charges that he received illegal gifts from wealthy benefactors, and conspired with press barons to change media laws as well as regulations in return for favourable coverage. He was in court in the first criminal trial ever against a sitting Israeli leader. Mr Netanyahu had tried to pass laws that would have granted him immunity from prosecution, but failed to gain the necessary majority.

The one-time Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has used the phrase ‘witch-hunt’, and the headline-grabbing nationalist former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, has applied the word (or words!), as well, when protests erupted in the country’s capital against corruption and fraud.

It has been employed, too, in Wales.

A ‘super-agent’ in the tragic case of the transfer to Cardiff City of footballer Emiliano Sala stood accused of fraud, but claimed he was victim of a “witch-hunt”.

During the extraordinary controversy at scandal-hit Swansea University (SU), where the police investigated alleged bribery in a multi-million pound land deal when senior officials including the ex-Vice-Chancellor (VC) Richard Davies, and the then head of his School of Management Marc Clement, were sacked for “gross misconduct”, it, naturely, cropped up!

In the long-running saga, support had been clear for the contentious previous Pro Vice-Chancellor (PVC), Hilary Lappin-Scott, who, The Eye exclusively revealed, was to leave.

An unbelievable anonymous campaign in her defence was undertaken using gmail or email, with messages sent to staff at SU as well as senior journalists (including me) and Welsh politicians.  One message said:  “Only Hillary (sic) can save Professor Boyle (Vice-Chancellor [VC] at SU) from the same incompetents that undermined Richard Davies’ stellar transformation of your Institution for the Region”. Another read:  “Last week’s email was blocked – here it is below for completeness’ sake. Ask yourself: what else is the leadership keeping from you?… Why is this witch hunt therefore still continuing?”.

However my journalists have shown how Professor Lappin-Scott had enraged her staff at SU, by sending tweets from glamorous parts of the world on university ‘business’, and the exploits became the subject of The Eye’s satirical writer. Despite this, the anonymous communications have claimed in the past that Professor Lappin-Scott would lead the university to “an era of gold and honey”.

The term ‘witch-hunt’ was used, too, as inquiries continued into the £200 million pound Pentre Awel (Breezy Village) (previously known as the ‘Wellness Village’) land deal at Llanelli where the police were called in.

The troubled institution has confirmed that apart from looking into the campaign itself, the police were involved in investigating alleged bribery during this so-called ‘witch-hunt’. An official statement from Swansea’s ‘Associate Director Vice-Chancellor’s Office, Head of Legal and Compliance Services’ stated :  “Alongside the University’s internal disciplinary process, there is also on-going police involvement (i) with regard to the issues uncovered during the University’s investigation; and (ii) anonymous communications sent to University staff relating to the suspensions and disciplinary processes. The matters under investigation are very serious. The University has invested a significant amount of resource investigating the alleged misconduct, as have the authorities. It is essential that nothing is done to undermine the on-going processes. They must be allowed to run their course without interference.”

The stunning ‘witch-hunt’ campaign at the university also formed a worrying backdrop to an exclusive disclosure on The Eye, that officials had hired a fraudster called Steve Chan who worked on a contract at the management school, and after my journalists there were alone in revealing how a previous Dean accused of bullying had died.

They showed how, apparently unknowingly, officials had even allowed Chan to represent the university in advising an international agency on the ways to combat fraud!

Chan had been imprisoned by a court in Boston, USA, for four years and three months, and ordered to pay millions of dollars in compensation. His jail sentence was followed by three years of supervised release, after he admitted one count of conspiracy to commit fraud and one count of mail fraud, he was also ordered to pay restitution of $12,596,298.

But the campaign inside SU alleging a ‘witch-hunt’ has been covered only partially by the mainstream media, and had been conducted ever since the incredible investigation was launched.

In part, one recent gmail to staff (and me) as well as the Chair of the SU council read:   “Why are these things happening and being leaked to Sion Barry (the Western Mail Business Editor) and, in turn, Phil Parry (someone trolling Professor Hillary [sic] Lappin-Scott) whilst in the middle of an independent internal investigation?”. Another added:  “Appended below you can find the previous installments (American spelling) and claims there has been “A trial by media, a kangaroo court, a selection of evidence and suspensions before interviews – almost as if the facts were at odds with the desired outcome”. Although again misspelt a further gmail was clear in the search for a new VC: “Please Hillary (sic) (Lappin-Scott) out (put?) your hat back in the ring!”.

Four of the questions asked in a Freedom of Information Act FOIA request about Chan were:

 

 

So it is, naturally, for Mr Johnson.

But it seems the timing was propitious – a report investigating allegations that he lied about ‘partygate’ was about to be published.

So as the media have asked: did Mr Johnson jump before he was pushed?..!

 

The memories of Phil’s decades long award-winning career in journalism (when words were always chosen carefully) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disease Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order it now.

Publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.

Tomorrow – why a formal apology by the head of the biggest UK police force over “cases of appalling behaviour” by its officers, has highlighted how there has been nothing like this from the largest service in Wales even though it was responsible for a string of terrible miscarriages of justice.