OneVSP CEO Muhammad Butt has given a length interview to Lucinda Lidstone about a number of topics including his parting ways with Sonia Poulton. Rather than deal with it in multiple places, I have made a detailed Twitter / X thread here. The full original interview can be found here (very long). The thread pulls together a lot of the evidence against Sonia and the ways she wronged Muhammad.
Lucinda Lidstone interviews Muhammad Butt and he reveals the truth about Sonia Poulton.
A High Court Judge has ordered Sonia Poulton to further clarify her ludicrous claim.
The High Court has today made a judgment requiring Sonia Poulton to clarify further her ludicrous counterclaim against former MP John Hemming and I. It has irritatingly, refused most of my strike-out requests and awarded Sonia some (but not all of) her modest litigant in person costs but she is still around £3,000 down when first instance costs are included and she has still been ordered to clarify. Ms Poulton has now stated that she will not file evidence regarding Darren Laverty’s conduct in relation to the main claim nor rely on his conduct against us. Therefore, disclosure will not be needed. Although (very good and thorough) judge Mr Justice Linden ruled her case still met the low bar to not get struck out right away, there were sledgehammer subtle hints that she is in desperate trouble at trial, “On Mr Smith and Mr Hemmings’ case, the legal issue will not arise in any event because, even assuming that Ms Poulton is entitled to rely on all of her pleaded particulars, she will not satisfy the overarching test for harassment on the evidence”. All parties were strongly encouraged to mediate. Arguments my application was an, “abuse of process” failed although I was criticised for leaving the attempt late. Poulton still faces a separate appeal from John Hemming on the meaning of her words.
OneVSP is a platform with great potential.
Your author MHN Editor Samuel Collingwood Smith is happy to announce that I have purchased 1.5 million shares in One VSP Limited (One-and-a-half-million). One VSP is an upcoming video sharing platform. This has only just gone through, and will be updated at Companies House in the coming weeks. I may also be doing some advisory work for the company.
OneVSP is a UK based video sharing platform similar to YouTube, Rumble and Bitchute, with an emphasis on free speech and monetisation through subscriptions, which limits its dependence on advertisements and advertisers with political views. MHN has been a critic of OneVSP in the past, but I have always said the company has potential.
Over the past few weeks I have had a number of discussions with shareholder and CEO Muhammad Butt. There are lots of exciting wheels in motion about improving and diversifying content so although political content will remain, there will be other draws to increase traffic. My opinion is qualified. As my day job, I am also qualified in Software Development and I am the owner of an IT Consultancy, Prosperous Software Consulting Limited Limited, which amongst other things develops software including working on high traffic websites, including for some large retail and financial businesses.
As a result, I have worked on very high profile websites. My contributions as an advisor will be around making One VSP as scalable as possible, as cost-effectively as possible, to deal with an increase in viewing. I am also concerned to maximise free speech on the platform, whilst complying with regulatory requirements.
OneVSP is a platform with great potential.
Your author and Matthew Hopkins News editor Samuel Collingwood Smith has buried the hatchet with OneVSP CEO Muhammad Butt. This is due to a positive gentlemens’ agreement, not litigation. In practical terms, this means I have removed a small number of materials from my site and YouTube, and Mr Butt has removed a small number of Sonia Poulton’s videos from her old OneVSP channel. As readers will previously have seen, Ms Poulton is no longer engaged by OneVSP nor funded by them.
If that was all that had been achieved, that would be enough. Any positive end to a disagreement is an achievement. However, even when Mr Butt and I were in dispute, I acknowledged that OneVSP has potential as a platform. The organisation has grown over the years since its founding, matured, and attracted investment. It is also attracting more and more high profile creators and content. It is early days yet, but it is quite possible I will be doing more with them in one form or another in the not too distant future.
In May this year, parts of Sonia Poulton’s case involving former Liberal MP John Hemming were struck out by a High Court Deputy Master – Irena Sabic – because they contradicted her previous witness statement – we said as dishonest lies. However, she succeeded in preserving other parts of her case, which she portrayed as a complete victory in the case as opposed to merely mitigating her losses in a procedural skirmish. The net costs payment was £3,850 against her. In particular Ms Poulton said that my appeal was refused. This was highly misleading – permission to appeal had only been refused by the original judge and Poulton knew an appeal was being pursued. In due course, as per the order shown below, that permission was granted by a higher court. The hearing was listed for 23rd October 2024 at the High Court in London, today. There has been not a whisper of this from Sonia Poulton, which in itself highly misleads her followers and donors.
In May a High Court Judge has struck out a critical part of Sonia Poulton’s Defence and ordered costs against her. Ms Poulton claimed this was a victory because part of her pleadings survived, and misleadingly claimed my appeal was refused. In fact permission was granted and it is being heard today.
Here is Ms Poulton’s X post (archive):
Poulton misleads her followers and donors by claiming complete victory and a refusal of my appeal.
Here is the truth in the form of the order of High Court Judge Mrs Justice Steyn DBE:
Contrary to Ms Poulton’s misleading statements permission was granted and the appeal is today. Whoever wins, Poulton’s honesty and integrity cannot be trusted.
Ms Poulton’s statements, as ever, were not to be relied upon. She knew full well that the first instance appeal refusal is not final and I could ask the higher court – the Deputy Master said I could in the remote hearing which Poulton attended.
John Hemming and Sonia Poulton faced each other in court again in Hemming v Poulton at a preliminary trial of meaning on 11th July 2024. The hearing did not go well for Sonia, who has always denied defaming Hemming.
Artists impression – John Hemming and Sonia Poulton clash at the High Court in London on 11th July 2024, backed by supporters. Poulton extends a skeletal hand across the battlefield, urging her undead minions forward.
For the past four years, Sonia Poulton has been denying she defamed John Hemming. As to some of her posts she even denies they mentioned him. That position began to crumble, badly, earlier this year when Deputy Master Irena Sabic (a High Court procedural judge) struck out Poulton’s denials as inconsistent with a witness statement and ordered a preliminary trial of meaning.
The preliminary trial of meaning occurred on 11th July 2024 and the judgment is here, for those who prefer to read the court’s words for themselves. Under consideration were two of the five publications for which Poulton is being sued. The judge, Deputy High Court Judge Susie Alegre, found both publications contained defamatory meanings. The weakest was an opinion meaning – but still defamatory, for a video Poulton made with Shaun Attwood and published in 2019. Even so, Poulton faces a critical difficulty. Opinion meanings are usually easier to defend – except for damning documents that have now passed into the public domain. Correspondence with police shows that Sonia Poulton finds Esther Baker so untrustworthy she would not give evidence for her in their failed criminal trial (charges dropped) against Darren Laverty.
Sonia Poulton says she has resigned from Australian online platform TNT Radio (archive). But did she jump before she was pushed after misleading her followers again about her latest loss in the ongoing case of Hemming v Poulton, which includes allegations of child abuse against her? As a result of misleading statements by Poulton, MHN is publishing the whole court order from a recent hearing.
A High Court Judge has struck out a critical part of Sonia Poulton’s Defence and ordered costs against her. She has also parted ways with her most recent employer (again). Are these things connected?
At the last hearing in Hemming v Poulton, both former MP John Hemming and I applied to strike out parts of Sonia Poulton’s Amended Defence and Counterclaim. In fact, both applications were partly prepared by myself, based on advice from barrister David Hirst and John’s application was delivered by barrister Matthew Hodson.
John’s application succeeded, mine failed. Net result? Part of Sonia Poulton’s pleadings were struck out as inconsistent with an earlier witness statement (that is, lies). She was ordered by Deputy Master Sabic (a High Court procedural judge) to pay John £4,000 and I was ordered to pay her £150. John is indemnifying me, so he is bound to pay it. On any measure, Sonia still made a net loss of £3,850.
Sonia is being sued by John Hemming for libel, harassment and breach of the GDPR. The claim includes allegations of child abuse. One part of the claim is that Hemming alleges that Sonia named two child torture victims in breach of a court order, when the judge who imposed the order had made clear it would harm them. Hemming says that Sonia was interviewed by police and the video was taken down. Sonia Poulton admits to this. Hemming then goes on to say Poulton lied to her followers about it on her fundraising page, accusing him (and for that matter, myself and Darren Laverty) of trying to frame her to conceal child abuse perpetrated by himself. He says she acted with malice because she knew she was guilty of the crime, even if she got off by grovelling and saying it was an accident. Even if she did not believe she was guilty, she at least knew it was reasonable to report her to police, since accidental or not, she did breach a child protection court order. So even then, he argues, her post was malicious. Sonia denied her words bore this highly libellous meaning on the basis that she was not talking about us. Irena Sabic KC struck out the denial because it contradicted an earlier witness statement. In effect, the court has found that Sonia was talking about us. Her words referred to Hemming. The next step is a pre-trial to determine what her words meant.
Sabic upheld John’s application and said my application had merit and was, “ably” presented but she wanted to leave the contested pleadings for trial. So, my application failed. The judge did not grant me permission to appeal the refusal of my application, but she said I could run all of those defences at trial. I have applied to the higher court for permission, it is an appeal from a Deputy Master so it goes to a High Court Judge. In the meantime there is a preliminary trial which Sonia is likely to lose as the key point in her defence was struck out. Unfortunately, Sonia has written about this in misleading terms as though she had a great success. What is horrifying is that at least some of Sonia’s deluded followers think she has won the entire case.
Twitter user xCharlyJox is going to be disappointed.
@xCharlyJox believes Sonia has won. In fact, the whole order is below.
A High Court Judge has struck out a critical part of Sonia Poulton’s Defence to John Hemming’s claim and ordered costs against her.
Sonia Poulton faced yet another reverse on Wednesday as High Court Deputy Master Irena Sabic KC (archive) handed her a defeat in the latest round of former MP John Hemming’s ongoing libel, harassment and data protection claim against her. Hemming is suing Poulton for a number of online publications and she has been desperately claiming for several years now that most of them are not about John Hemming. Unfortunately, Poulton foolishly tried to claim allegations she made in a post (‘the 5th Publication’, in the claim) is not about John Hemming when she had signed a witness statement to the contrary. The judge was not impressed. In my opinion, based on the contradiction, Poulton was deliberately lying. Donors to Poulton should take note of the below, and seek their money back!
The Case Management Conference (‘CMC’) your author attended this week with Sonia Poulton was one of the maddest court hearings I have ever, ever attended, despite the extremely efficient judge. It was originally listed for costs management and case management. John Hemming and I then made applications for directions and to strike out parts of Ms Poulton’s claim. We followed the rules on cooperating for time estimates. Ms Poulton did not. We filed proper applications – Ms Poulton did not, but raised lengthy issues including a request for an expert witness. An anonymous expert witness. An. Anonymous. Expert. Witness. Despite being sanctioned on costs to the tune of over £30K at the hearing in October, Ms Poulton also applied for penalties against us for, “oppression” on costs.
As the hearing began the Deputy Master disposed of Ms Poulton’s applications in mere moments on the basis there was no time as there was no proper application (and therefore, time allocated in the hearing). She then moved on to the serious allegations against Poulton.
This is a heavily revised version of my article about Sonia Poulton’s vile anti-Semitism. Sonia Poulton has been tweeting recently about the court case we are involved in and me, claiming I have been making up lies, including in particular that she is “anti-Semitic”. I have revised and republished this article because I do not wish to prejudice any proceedings should they occur, unexpectedly, much sooner than initially anticipated.
Sonia Poulton claims the allegations of anti-Semitism are lies.
I stand by my opinion that Sonia is anti-Semitic, which is based on the content she has produced and participated in. To give some (non-exhaustive) examples of the facts my opinion is based on I would like to start with her video aired on 18 July 2020 in which Sonia Poulton and Shaun Attwood interview noted holocaust denier Ryan Dawson, uncritically and sympathetically. The horrifying assertions from this video include (checks notes):
(1) When asked if victims of 9/11 would see justice Dawson responds – “some justice yeah I mean I don’t think it’ll get back to Israel […]” – meaning that Israel is responsible for 9/11 and victims will not see justice against Israel.
(2) The Knesset, Israel’s legislature, only banned people trafficking to avoid Jewish blood being diluted, “what it was that won them over to finally start making rules about the victims of human trafficking wasn’t the horror of being lured to Israel under some false pretense like oh you’re gonna be a nannie or you have this job or that and they’re getting all these Eastern Europeans and then just taking their passport away and forcing them to work in a brothel no it was because they uh it was disturbing the Jewish majority demographic”
(3) The laws that were passed by the Knesset were designed to ensure children could be used and raped then deported when they were adults and no longer desirable to paedophiles, “[…] so once they were of age uh they were no longer desirable sexually they deported them back to wherever they stole them from based on illegal immigration.”
At the end of the video, Sonia fulsomely thanks Dawson, apologises for any technical issues and expresses a wish to get him involved again. She in no way condemns or criticises his views. She later posted this on Twitter [1] (archive):
After being put on an indefinite hiatus by the video sharing platform One VSP, extremist Sonia Poulton has been trying to fundraise by other means. On Saturday 9th December, concerningly, Riddings Park Community Centre allowed an event of hers to go ahead despite being notified of some of Sonia Poulton’s content. Meanwhile her former platform Brand New Tube has been reprimanded by the ICO, shortly before it was renamed One VSP, and is now under investigation by OfCom. A judge has found that allegations of child abuse made against Poulton by Hemming as part of his libel and harassment claim have, “a real prospect of success”.
Sonia Poulton promotes the channel of a man called Albert Bishai – with this sinister graphic. In your author’s opinion, this graphic bears the racist and anti-Semitic meaning, promoted by Sonia Poulton, that the world is ruled by a Jewish conspiracy in the name of Satan. According to the public notice of investigation, OfCom are investigating whether One VSP has taken sufficient measures to protect the general public from, “material that would amount to a criminal offence under laws relating to terrorism, child sexual exploitation and abuse, and racism and xenophobia”.
In a recent court judgement, allegations of child abuse against Poulton were found to have a ‘real prospect of success’ and John Hemming was given permission to bring a claim against Poulton on that basis. Screenshots from his draft amendments to his claim and the judgement below:
John Hemming’s pleadings that Sonia is guilty of a criminal offence of child abuse by her naming two children who had been tortured in breach of a court order. The court found this had a, ‘real prospect of success’.
In her judgement of November 2023 – Ms Justice Hill DBE allowed Hemming permission to bring a claim of malicious defamation against Sonia Poulton. The claim is based on her abusing two child torture victims by naming them in breach of a court order. When Poulton was interviewed by police and the video was taken town, it is alleged that she then defamed John Hemming and others as having tried to frame her. The judge found the claim has a ‘real prospect of success’.
The remaining Trustees have not denied any of the allegations when they were put in writing by MHN.
The content of Sonia Poulton’s output is now the topic of concern from many people and institutions. We will continue to campaign for her to be de-platformed for promoting hate speech and reckless, irresponsible journalism. The two resignees are to be commended. The remaining Trustees have only themselves to blame for being tarred with the brush of Poulton’s vile extremism.