Dan Wootton Nearing The End

Some time ago, Zelo Street was in receipt of what is generally termed a Nastygram, from a legal firm named Griffin Law. They were representing the odious flannelled fool Master Harry Cole, formerly tame gofer to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog, and who maintains the apparent fiction that he is a real journalist. But he works for the Sun.

He's desperate, Dan

And, as John McDonnell once put it, you can work for the Sun, or you can be a journalist, but you cannot be both. The legal threat was rebuffed, including the threat of taking out a charge on my house in Crewe, and no more was heard of it. But now Griffin Law is back on the scene, defending the singularly unpleasant Dan Wootton, instead of more expensive Mishcon de Reya.

Had Desperate Dan solicited my opinion, he would have been told that my opinion was that, had Master Cole paid money for that legal threat, he was an even bigger mug than I first thought. Still, according to the latest Popbitch email, Mishcon de Reya were charging Wootton £900 an hour and Griffin Law just £400 per hour. So has the new firm made any difference to Dan’s case?

Maybe not. Griffin Law, domain of one Donal Blaney, formerly head man at the Young Britons’ Foundation before the YBF became embroiled in the Tory bullying scandal and was disbanded, has failed to distinguish itself on the legal field of battle thus far. Let’s consider the latest series of revelations from the people at Byline Times - and then the response from Griffin Law.

The article’s heading, “Dan Wootton and Martin Branning - The Proof … In the seventh part of its three-year special investigation, Byline Times can reveal the internet data leaks that tie the TV presenter to the online aliases he has not denied being connected to”, tells you all about the content.

“GB News star Dan Wootton twice used an identical password as the catfishing pseudonyms ‘Martin Branning’ and ‘Maria Joseph’ to subscribe to a movie-sharing website, Byline Times can reveal … The presenter used the password along with the email addresses for his private web domain danwootton.com and also his official News of the World account. They were leaked and published on a publicly-available data breach directory in October 2018”. So these two identical passwords were publicly available. Do go on.

“Alongside Wootton’s two email addresses revealed in a dump of log-in details for 743,280 users of the defunct film-indexing service ‘MyDVD.overhere.com’ were the email addresses Byline Times revealed ‘Branning’ and ‘Joseph’ had used to trick and bribe scores of men”.

No comment

“All four of the accounts used the same unusual eight-character password. To protect Wootton’s privacy, this newspaper is not publishing the password - which his new representatives today appeared to confirm was indeed used by the journalist … Byline Times commissioned analysis of the data by an eminent PhD specialist in mathematical prediction modelling. The expert said the chances of Wootton’s password randomly duplicating those of Branning and Joseph were ‘vanishingly small’”. So what say Griffin Law?

Byline Times does say “his new representatives today appeared to confirm was indeed used by the journalist”. The specialist noted “Assuming that a user can choose any eight-letter password using the 26 lower case, 26 upper case and 0-9, then approximately 218 trillion passwords could be formed”.

Peter Jukes revealed that Griffin Law’s “response to the information we provided them was to accuse us of hacking their client and saying they would be making a criminal complaint to the police … Thereby confirming the passwords were indeed Wootton’s”. OH WHAT A GIVEAWAY!

And while Wootton continues to enjoy the confidence of management at Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”), Press Gazette has brought less favourable news from the inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker, who have decided they can get along without The Great Man for now.

“Dan Wootton’s Mail Online column has been paused while allegations made against him are investigated … The allegations, published in a series of stories by independent outlet Byline Times, include claims around payments for explicit images and videos and others in relation to alleged behaviour while working at The Sun”. He’s a freelance, so no column, no payment.

PG also adds this gem: “Griffin Law’s founder Donal Blaney previously reportedly helped journalist Isabel Oakeshott secure a five-figure sum from The Guardian over a ‘sexist slur’. Oakeshott and Guido Fawkes have described him as the ‘rottweiler of the right’”. Yeah, right.

Dan Wootton is not yet totally finished. But you can see it from there.

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