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UK police special enquiry team to examine role of Washington Post chief in email deletions

Published

2 hours ago

July 31, 2024

UK police special enquiry team to examine role of Washington Post chief in email deletions

A British police special enquiry team is examining allegations that Will Lewis, now the chief executive of the Washington Post, presided over the deliberate destruction of emails at Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper business when he worked for the company 13 years ago.

The Met has told the former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown that its standing unit responsible for high-profile cases is reviewing a complaint he had submitted about Lewis after fresh disclosures emerged during civil actions relating to the phone-hacking scandal.

The letter, seen by the Guardian, is signed by the Met’s most senior officer, Mark Rowley, and tells Brown: “Please be assured that the contents of your letter, dated 2 May 2024, is being considered by the Met’s special enquiry team.”

The police chief adds: “The issues you raise are complex and will take time to consider against investigations that have already taken place.”

Brown’s original letter to Rowley had urged him to review new evidence relating to “the concealment and destruction of up to 30 million emails, hard drives and documents” – and police to launch an investigation “into the destruction of evidence” and “the cover-up that followed”.

In response, Brown, writing in the Guardian, questions whether Lewis is an appropriate leader for the flagship US newspaper owned by the billionaire founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos – accusing Lewis of displaying a “lack of ethics” when he worked for Murdoch during the hacking scandal.

“Blazoned across the top of every edition of the Washington Post is the statement, ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’ But what if the publisher himself is a master of the dark arts?” Brown says.

The former PM goes on to accuse Lewis of trying to mislead British detectives investigating phone hacking at the News of the World in the summer of 2011 – by telling police that Brown himself was behind a plot to steal emails of senior executives at the tabloid’s UK owner, Murdoch’s News International.

“I have only recently discovered how Lewis attempted to accuse me of a crime I did not commit,” Brown says. He accuses Lewis of being engaged in a “complete fabrication”.

“While Lewis has always claimed that he was Mr Clean Up, these new allegations point to a cover-up,” he says.

Documents disclosed in high court civil actions this week include a minute taken by the Met police of a meeting detectives had with Lewis on 8 July 2011. Detectives were inquiring into the deletion of emails belonging to senior executives at Murdoch’s newspaper company.

In the meeting, Lewis justified the deletions by accusing Brown of “controlling” a plot with the former Labour MP Tom Watson to obtain the emails of Rebekah Brooks, the then chief executive of News International, through a third party. Lewis was the company’s general manager at the time.

“We got a warning from a source that a current member of staff had got access to Rebekah’s [Brooks’] emails and had passed them to Tom Watson MP,” Lewis told the police, who told officers he went on to meet the individual behind the claim.

“The source repeated the threat,” Lewis continued, according to the police memo. “Then the source came back and said it was a former member of staff and the emails had definitely been passed and that it was controlled by Gordon Brown.”

Brown writes that the police officer who headed the initial hacking investigation, Sue Akers, now regards this explanation as unbelievable, citing comments she made to the New York Times earlier this month. “Gordon Brown was obviously one of the victims,” she said. “The thought that he would do that is ludicrous.”

A spokesperson for the Washington Post said that Lewis declined to comment. He has consistently denied allegations of wrongdoing.

Lewis has enjoyed a high-flying career before and after the hacking scandal. He remained at News International until 2014, then moved on to another senior role in the Murdoch empire, as chief executive of Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, until 2020.

Lewis was picked by Bezos to become chief executive of the Washington Post last year, and he caused controversy at the US paper by trying to appoint an old ally, the Briton Robert Winnett, as editor. After a furore, Winnett eventually decided not to take up the job.

In June, Bezos sent a memo to staff at the newspaper, defending Lewis: “Team – I know you’ve already heard this from Will, but I wanted to also weigh in directly: the journalistic standards and ethics at The Post will not change.”

Brown said he now he believed the Met police memo demonstrated that Lewis “gave the game away” because “his explanation conceded that the emails were destroyed to prevent them being seen”.

The email archives of a handful of senior executives at Murdoch’s UK operation, including those of Lewis and Brooks, had been deleted a few months earlier in January 2011, during a period in which allegations of phone hacking at the News of the World were growing.

Brown writes: “The destroyed emails that the police wanted were likely to have revealed much more of News Group’s intrusion into the private lives of thousands of innocent people, not least ordinary families hit by tragedy, and almost certainly would have added to what I have only recently discovered about what happened to me.”

Back in July 2011, Lewis told police that Brooks was anxious about her emails becoming public, because of her professional relationship with Tony Blair, Brown’s predecessor as prime minister. “She was a Tony Blair supporter whilst she was editor of the Sun,” Lewis told officers.

“They were very good friends. There was potential for that to be used against her in a negative way,” Lewis said.

Civil actions relating to alleged phone hacking have been running in the English courts for more than a decade. Murdoch’s News Group has paid out hundreds of millions and settled more than 1,300 lawsuits relating to hacking at the now-closed News of the World, but always rejected allegations of wrongdoing at the Sun.

Brown writes in the Guardian he already knew that the Sunday Times had, among other things, “accessed information about my mortgage from my building society, had reverse engineered my telephone number, had faked my voice to secure personal information about me from my lawyer, and had paid an investigator to break into the police national computer to find out what personal information about me was available.”

But he claims he now knows the intrusion went much further than that.

“More recently, I have been given information that the Murdoch group also paid investigators to break into other personal accounts of mine – including bank, gas and electricity – suggesting that nothing was out of bounds.” Brown explains.

Murdoch’s goals were political and commercial, the former prime minister argues. The media mogul wanted to take full control of Sky television, buy control of ITV, “neuter the BBC” and “control much of the highly profitable UK telecoms industry, all of which the Conservatives were ready to go along with”.

A spokesperson for Murdoch’s News UK said that Brown had only seen “partial information” from the civil cases and “does not have access to all material including detailed statements served by the defence”.

They added: “He is seeking to persuade the Met to take sides in a public debate.”

It was “strongly denied” that News International “sought to impede or worse conceal evidence from the Met” by deleting emails, the spokesperson added.

They cited a Crown Prosecution Service statement from December 2015, which said: “There is no evidence to suggest that email deletion was undertaken in order to pervert the course of justice.”

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The view from Paris: Troubled waters for surfers in Tahiti

Published

9 hours ago

July 31, 2024

Press Room

The view from Paris: Troubled waters for surfers in Tahiti

I’m Pete, and The Washington Post sent me to Paris to show you some of the wonders and weirdness you couldn’t otherwise see without being here.

Today is surfing day — sort of.

My story is short because I saw little other than my laptop screen, and that would not make an interesting visual dispatch.

Meeting all the skateboarders I wrote about in Tuesday’s story made me think about surfing. Watching Olympians surf, to be clear. My skateboarding skills are bad enough; no need to trade road rash for coral cuts.

Maybe it’s just as well. All of Tuesday’s competitions were postponed because of poor sea conditions. The competition is very likely to be called on during Wednesday. Check the status here.

But that doesn’t mean we have no surfing for you. My colleagues did a story about why the waves at the “wall of skulls” are so treacherous, and columnist Sally Jenkins spoke with surfing legend Laird Hamilton about how to ride them. And if you haven’t seen it, check out the story behind this unbelievable photo.

Even Olympians find the waves at Teahupo’o, where the competition is occurring, to be unpredictable. At least two surfers have needed stitches: Australian Jack Robinson needed five in his foot; Johanne Defay of France needed four to close a head wound. She wore a helmet Sunday. Tim Elter of Germany became internet famous for losing his pants — and for his cheeky response to it.

Surfing may be back today, and I definitely will be back Thursday, writing about a tasty new topic.

Pete’s adventures are mostly those of Artur Galocha, who is reporting from Paris. They’re written by Bonnie Berkowitz and illustrated by Álvaro Valiño. Map by Laris Karklis. Editing by Jason Murray. Graphics editing by Samuel Granados. Copy editing by Ella Brockway.

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U.S. military launches first airstrike in Iraq in months

Published

16 hours ago

July 31, 2024

Press Room

U.S. military launches first airstrike in Iraq in months

U.S. forces carried out an airstrike in Iraq on Tuesday night, targeting unspecified “combatants” attempting to launch a one-way attack drone, officials said.

The incident followed attacks on American positions in Iraq and Syria in recent days, officials said, ending what had been months of relative calm between U.S. forces and militias there that are supported by Iran.

U.S. officials said the airstrike happened in Musayib, a town south of Baghdad, but disclosed few other details. A defense official said in a brief statement that “based on recent attacks in Iraq and Syria,” U.S. military officials assessed that the activity constituted a threat to American and coalition forces. Like some others, this official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operation.

“This action underscores the United States’ commitment to the safety and security of our personnel,” the statement said. “We maintain the inherent right to self-defense and will not hesitate to take appropriate action.”

A second defense official said the airstrike followed three attacks on U.S. forces in recent days. On Thursday, two rockets targeted al-Asad Air Base in Iraq and another struck on or near a U.S. outpost in Syria, the official said. The following day, two additional rockets targeted the facility in Syria, Mission Support Site Euphrates. No damage or injuries were reported in any of those incidents, the official said.

U.S. officials have long feared that Israel’s war in Gaza could spill over into other parts of the Middle East, where Iran enjoys considerable influence.

Tuesday’s airstrike, reported earlier by Reuters, follows a spike in violence between Israel and Hezbollah, a powerful Iranian-backed group in Lebanon.

Earlier in the day, Israel carried out an airstrike in a busy neighborhood on the outskirts of Beirut, saying it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander responsible for an attack Saturday that killed 12 children in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. The Lebanese Health Ministry said the attack killed a woman and two children. Hezbollah denied it was responsible for the weekend attack.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, speaking to reporters after meeting with officials in the Philippines on Tuesday, expressed hope for a diplomatic resolution to avoid a full-blown conflict but said the United States will defend Israel if it is attacked by Hezbollah. “We’ve been clear about that,” he said.

In the weeks after Hamas-led militants launched a deadly cross-border attack into Israel on Oct. 7, spawning the ongoing war in Gaza, other militant groups backed by Iran started attacking U.S. military positions in Iraq, Syria and Jordan, linking their violence to Washington’s support for Israel. The militias in Iraq and Syria, along with the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza, are all part of the same network and are provided weapons and training by Iran, U.S. officials have said.

In February, after at least 165 attacks on U.S. forces, the Biden administration approved airstrikes in response to, and to avenge, the deaths of three U.S. soldiers killed in a one-way drone strike on their base in Jordan.

Tuesday’s airstrike in Iraq occurred as U.S. and Iraqi officials negotiate a possible withdrawal of at least some of the approximately 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq. An additional 900 troops are based in Syria, with a mission to counter the Islamic State, and are reliant on personnel in Iraq for logistical help.

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Analysis | Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick comes into sharper focus

Published

23 hours ago

July 30, 2024

Press Room

Analysis | Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick comes into sharper focus

Welcome to The Campaign Moment, your guide to the biggest developments in a 2024 election that’s increasingly all about vibes — and vetting the VP picks.

(Make sure you are subscribed to this newsletter here. You can also hear my analysis weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.)

The big moment

It’s getting to be crunchtime for Vice President Harris’s choice of a running mate.

The pick is due by Aug. 7, when the Democratic Party aims to formally nominate its ticket, solidifying Harris’s elevation to the top slot after President Biden’s exit from the contest. But we just got word that Harris is planning to tour the battlegrounds with the pick next week, which suggests it could come before the deadline.

Meanwhile, we’re seeing the candidates wage what’s basically a sprint of a campaign for the job — a remarkable scene in itself. They’ve done events for her both virtually and on the campaign trail, they’ve blanketed the airwaves with media appearances, and many of them seem to be making the case as much for themselves as for Harris.

That sprint of a campaign — along with two candidates indicating Monday that they’re not the pick — has crystallized the choice for Harris. So I thought it a good time to update my previous handicapping based on the latest.

The momentum candidate: Walz

Nobody’s stock has risen over the past week as much as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), who was previously thought to be something of a dark horse for the job. Walz has pushed himself into the conversation with a barrage of media appearances in which he’s played up his rural roots and everyman appeal. Perhaps nobody has “campaigned” for the job quite as much as he has.

But subtly, perhaps the best argument for Walz is how he’s seeded the biggest emerging Democratic talking point: that the GOP ticket is “weird.” Walz almost seemed to stumble upon it a week ago, but it quickly took hold.

The other messenger candidate: Buttigieg

To the extent this VP pick is about taking the fight to Republicans, Walz has some real competition for that mantle: from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has also been all over the airwaves.

And while Walz is the hot new thing, Buttigieg has been doing this kind of thing for years — even going on Fox News to joust with its hosts. An appearance this past Sunday in which Buttigieg declined to accept the Fox host’s premises has been shared far and wide on the left.

The swing-state picks: Shapiro and Kelly

While those two candidates might be the insurgents, two potential swing-state-focused picks thought to be leading contenders from the start still loom large — particularly, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly.

Shapiro has been touring his home state in a potential preview of what he could provide the Harris campaign in a crucial state. And a Fox News poll this weekend reinforced the asset he could be. Shapiro’s favorable rating in Pennsylvania was 61 percent — compared to just 32 percent unfavorable — and more than three in 10 Donald Trump supporters liked him. He even led Trump by 10 points in a hypothetical matchup as the party’s nominee.

Kelly has been quieter than these other candidates, and he maintains a lower profile. But an ABC News/Ipsos poll this week showed him with the best net image rating of any of the potential picks.

While other candidates have gone after JD Vance — Walz’s “weird” comments have keyed on Vance — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has focused his pitch extensively on the GOP vice-presidential pick. He’s called Vance a “phony” who has “exploited” and exaggerated his ties to eastern Kentucky and Appalachia. He’s even said he would be eager to debate Vance. That’s a pretty eager (and arguably presumptuous) statement.

To the extent the name of the game is to create a contrast in running mates, Beshear has positioned himself as that.

Two major candidates thought to be in the mix signaled Monday that we should look elsewhere. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said that he’s pulling out of consideration, while Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said she’s “not a part of the vetting” — after previously suggesting that she wouldn’t take the job.

Others who have been mentioned but haven’t been as out front include Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

Another key moment

The presidential race is suddenly blocking out the political sun. But federal and state primaries are kicking back into gear after a sleepy month of July. And we start with a big one Tuesday in Arizona.

The Washington Post’s Amy B Wang has your primer for that state’s primaries. A couple big storylines to watch:

It’s long been assumed that former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake would win the GOP nomination for Senate, and that still appears likely — especially after Lake got some late help from Trump. But the most recent polling suggests that Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb has narrowed the gap somewhat, as some fret that Lake can’t win a general election. (Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego has regularly led in head-to-head matchups with Lake). If Lake doesn’t win big, expect some more fretting.
One of the ugliest and most contentious Republican primaries in recent history culminates tonight in the 8th Congressional District. It features a pair of statewide candidates who lost alongside Lake in 2022 — former Senate nominee Blake Masters and former attorney general nominee Abe Hamadeh — along with state House Speaker Ben Toma and former congressman Trent Franks. Masters has not-subtly pointed to Hamadeh’s heritage and lack of a family, while Hamadeh has played up his “testosterone” and accused Masters of “having a mental breakdown.” Trump previously endorsed Hamadeh but hedged his bets over the weekend by also endorsing Masters (something he’s done before, by endorsing “Eric” in a 2022 Senate primary featuring more than one Eric.)

A momentous number

That’s the percentage of voters in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll who were so-called “double-haters” — who disliked both of the two major-party presidential candidates.

That number is way down from where it’s been for much of the 2024 election cycle; it’s generally hovered around 20 percent. The number has declined given how much better voters like Harris than Biden, but it’s also declined in part because of improved views of Trump. (Multiple recent high-quality polls show around 47 or 48 percent of voters like Trump.)

That renders this group less pivotal for the race ahead, at least for now. But we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that both Harris and Trump are enjoying a bit of a temporary honeymoon — Harris after replacing Biden, and Trump after the assassination attempt and the recent Republican National Convention.

The good news for Harris: Recent polling suggests she does better with these double-haters than Biden was doing. A Fox News poll in Wisconsin showed her winning them by 25 points, after such voters were split in the poll back in April.