On Wednesday night, shortly before facing heroic Arron Banks in the High Court, fantasist journalist Carole Cadwalladr admitted she had no facts to justify her Orwell award winning fantasies that Bankski’s Russian pals did sordid business deals with him and then funded the Brexit campaign. But if you are a Guardian reading fantasist Carole still wants your money and so continues the charade
Carole has issued a statement via her solicitors Bindmans:
We represent Carole Cadwalladr in a libel claim brought against her by Arron Banks.
In December last year, the Judge made a decision about the single meaning of her statement about Arron Banks. In light of that judgment, Banks withdrew a significant part of his claim. Following clarification of the judgment in relation to the one remaining allegation, Carole has now withdrawn her truth defence, but, contrary to some reporting, has not made any admissions and stands by her public interest reporting.
She will continue to defend the claim and we anticipate that the case will be heard at trial next year.
There is then a link to Carole’s crowdfunding site where, so far, she has raised £168,000 to fight Bankski.
Carole herself has tweeted a link to Bindmans citing the coverage of recent events by certain sources. “Russian state affiliated media RT_com and SputnikInt are all over this”.
Cripes! It is only those damn Russians riding to the aid of their comrade Bankski who are interested in this. Bankski has become Emmanuel Goldstein for those in the metropolitan elites who cannot accept the way we dirty plebs voted on Brexit.
It is not surprising that the Guardian, BBC, Channel 4 etc are not reporting the developments in this libel case as they gave a platform to Carole to repeat her claims about Arron and the Russians. Wisely, comrade Bankski specifically sought from the Courts, and obtained, leave to go after other media outlets who either gave a platform to, or repeated, Carole’s allegedly defamatory claims once he had dealt with the crazy cat lady herself.
Carole’s interesting new defence is that while she cannot prove any of her defamatory claims but it was in the public interest to print them anyway. So reporting things that may well be totally untrue is in the public interest? Good luck with that love.
But as she battles on with this case it is important to remember that she is not paying for it. Having told her supporters that he could prove her case with fact and so raised vast amounts of cash to fight the case, she is now exposed as a fraudster since it is inconceivable that she only be came aware of her lack of evidence at the last minute.
In the end the costs and damages that Bankski will win are likely to dwarf the £62,000 he has already been awarded so the crowdfunding must continue.
Meanwhile, what would George Orwell think of Carole’s tweeting. Winston Smith at the Ministry of Truth would have admired her. Her award-winning articles have now been shown to be fiction so how can we explain this to the people of Airstrip One? Simple, we insist that they are still true as facts no longer matter but there is a greater public interest which Winston and Carole are seeking to defend. Meanwhile those trying to report the admission that there is no factual evidence for the claims are agents of Eurasia with whom we have always been at war and so must be disbelieved.