Mensch….blackmail email horror victim probe

If you were going to threaten a high-profile MP, would you do it by email?

Louise Mensch must’ve felt a bit of a wazzock when she woke up the day after the Murdoch-grilling CM&S committee to find that she’d misquoted from Piers Morgan’s book The Insider. Using a quote that the MP later admitted she’d ‘misread’, Mensch breezily accused Morgan (using Parliamentary privilege) of fessing up to hacking – and so, of course, the Romping Arse then humiliated her on live CNN TV. Soon afterwards, she apologised.

But then – on the same day as her apology letter, as it happens – our Louise received a heinous and ghastly email demanding that she call off her dogs, or else ‘we’ would release details of her past drugs, sex, got fired and dancing badly shame. To be honest, it was pretty tame stuff. But anyway, with great fanfare plucky Louise dismissed the contents with elan, encouraging ‘those behind’ the letter to Publish and be Damned.

The e-threat did exactly what the MP undoubtedly wanted it to: divert attention from her monumental balls-up based on sloppy research. Philip Henscher in the Independent wrote a glowing piece praising her ‘guts’. A similar accolade appeared in the New Statesman. Now it could be that I’m cynical, but I cannot see a single reason why anyone would take this ’email threat’ seriously.

No matter how many ways you Google the name given in the note – David Jones Investigative Journalists – those words reveal nothing, beyond them being the swinish fiends who mailed the threat of revelation to Basher Mensch. There is no company of that name anywhere in the Companies House records (finally got to use my subscription there) and naturally, being highly professional and cunning blackmailers, DJIJ didn’t put an address or phone number in the email.

So what the rising star MP presented us with was an uncheckable news story involving untraceable media bullies and mass distraction: how very convenient. As it happens, there is a hack at the Dacre Mail called David Jones – an organ which, as aficionados know rather well – Ms. Mensch doesn’t like. But this David Jones was in Norway reporting on the growing threat of Nazi hordes about to destabilise our democracy. The Mail thus has a watertight alibi.

I also doubt if the Newscorp mob sent it: they’d be glad of the Morgan distraction – and Louise’s incredibly media-illiterate accusation against Paul Dacre. And most of the Wapping Liars are halfway to being banged up anyway.

In fact, no truly determined hack would be so amateurish in execution: they’d do what Newscorp used to do….send messages via their acolytes. In the whole of the Hackgate saga, there is not a single example of anyRebekah Redtop-style threat being received by email. And any email coming from Googlemail or Hotmail (ie, a free sign-up) is always open to question…not to say, extreme doubt.

As far as I can tell so far, only the FT’s Jim Pickard (of Westminster Blog fame) has raised any doubt about the veracity and purpose of this ‘blackmail attempt’. Using the email provided there, I sent a message to DJIJ yesterday. It didn’t bounce back (so somebody owns it) but they didn’t reply. They didn’t reply today either. The Guardian did get a reply, alleging that David Jones ‘represents’ a group of people concerned with/about the decriminalisation of drugs – another area of the CM&S’s remit.

Now, how many lobbyists do you know who use a free-sign email address?

And here’s another oddity: I can’t quite grasp why Louise chose to state so boldly that accusations about drugs wouldn’t stop her from pursuing her ‘investigation’ into Hackgate.

So it was that I determined to contact the chap described as Mensch’s pr.  Tom Steiner turns out to be a financial-specialist account director at agency Capital LM&S. Despite the obvious potential for gags here, political skullduggery and blackmail probably isn’t really his thing. When in Florida, Louise Mensch tweeted to say that she had ‘hired’ Capital, but the switchboard denied this, saying that Steiner was merely ‘supporting’ the MP. Do we detect more dexterity with the verite here?

Steiner’s previous employer Edelman financial said of Tom that he is “personable and pragmatic, and delivers excellent results for his clients – and can be relied upon to get the job done.”

Well, we can all certainly vouch for the last part: the Nasty Email and She Hit the Bounder for Six story turned Louise into an overnight heroine.  But the two questions I put to Tom remained unanswered, viz:

Why Louise thinks the ‘drugs’ lobbyists chose now to write to her;

Why Louise replied to the effect that nothing would dissuade her from Hackgate investigations – which is part of the CM&S remit, but has nothing to do with drugs. Allegedly.

Despite a phone call and two follow-up emails, Mr Steiner chose not to be personable on this occasion. Perhaps he was getting in touch with his pragmatic side.

The bottom line is that Mrs Mensch (who has carved out a career writing chick-lit fiction) needs to flesh out this character ‘David Jones’ for us. As a member of the Culture, Media & Sport Committee, she could very easily contact Google and ask for the heads up on Mr Jones’s email address – who opened it, when and why…and what other information they have for us on the person. They do, after all, know everything about all of us.

But given the title of her new book is ‘Destiny’, one can’t help feeling that a sense of this is what mainly drives the MP for Corby. One thing’s for sure: it isn’t accuracy.