Vijaya Gadde at a Fortune Brainstorm Tech event. Would she be such a popular speaker if she was properly no-platformed due to her allowing vile stalking and racism against a child rape victim as well as anti-Semitism? Picture by Photograph by Kevin Moloney/Fortune Brainstorm TECH. (NC License here).

On 4 April 2020, I published the article, “Twitter’s Del Harvey / Alison Shea and Vijaya Gadde Openly Back Child Rape Stalker and Anti-Semite Racist”. Multiple parties, including Twitter, threatened lawsuits. Twitter did not make good on their threats. Esther Baker attempted to do so. The lawsuit over the article, brought by Esther Baker in the High Court in London, was commenced in 2020 (before the Twitter purchase was proposed) and determined in my favour last week. The lawsuit has the potential to harm Twitter’s reputation. So, did Twitter know about it, and did they disclose it to Elon Musk when they formed the purchase agreement between Twitter and Musk currently being litigated in Delaware in the United States? Did Twitter notify Musk of the legal risks arising from the matters in this article – “Labour’s Secret Deal with Twitter and Facebook to Surveil its own members”? The article ended with an express threat to draw it to the attention of the relevant regulatory law enforcement body.

It is worth recapping for new readers. In 2020 I was covering a significant amount of what, in my opinion, was wrongdoing by Twitter. The Labour Party head office team had been using an in-house application that used their database of member emails, cross-referenced with privileged access to the Twitter API, to scan their members’ tweets for statements warranting disciplinary action. It is unclear if members’ consent was ever clearly sought for this by either the Labour Party or Twitter, or whether they were told about it. It is likely that would have been a legal requirement for processing to be compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The second issue was Twitter’s inconsistent handling of complaints of breaches of its rules. Esther Baker, had, at the time, been made subject to two restraining orders by UK courts. One was for libel and the other was for, in the words of His Honour Judge Gargan, “particularly malevolent” and “racist” stalking. One of her supporters, Alan Goodwin, had made plainly anti-Semitic posts including gratuitous, utterly baseless, speculation that a senior British government minister had conspired with Mossad to cover up child abuse. The actions of Esther Baker (@Esther9982) and her supporter Alan Goodwin (@Ciabaudo), followed by Twitter lawyer Vijaya Gadde’s failure to deal with them even after being thoroughly put on notice, were the subjects of my 4 April article.

Around 8pm on 1 May 2020, I received a letter from UK lawyers Bristows telling me that my article was libellous and there was, “no conceivable chance of defending” it as truth or honest opinion and saying it should be, “removed immediately”. I refused, and published the relevant section of the letter and mocked them in this article. I then requested further information under UK pre-action rules. Much as Elon Musk complains, Twitter were curiously reluctant to answer my questions and backed off as I detailed in my later article, “Twitter and Bristows in Humiliating Libel Climb Down”.

Bristows now claim they were never threatening to sue me on behalf of Twitter. That letter they sent me late on a Friday night was just abstract information shootin’ the breeze.

Bristows are a proper libel law firm and therefore know better than to test me in court. I stand by the article. Vijaya and her colleagues have in effect supported the actions of Esther Baker and Alan Goodwin by not banning / permanently suspending them from Twitter, when others have been banned without recourse for far lesser wrongdoing. In fact Twitter did not even remove the tweets that were the actus re of the stalking, just made them inaccessible in the UK.

Esther Baker on the other hand showed greater bravery than Twitter, if less competence. She did it. She brought proceedings. Specifically, I was suing Baker at the time for libel and harassment in the UK High Court. Although she eventually settled my claim (and she agreed to a lifelong restraining order that can be downloaded here), Baker brought a counterclaim. Which I defended as Truth. The judge assessed the meanings as follows in a judgement of February 2022. Several of the meanings especially related to Baker’s conduct on Twitter –

• Ms Baker has made multiple claims of rape against Mr Hemming MP and others which have no real factual foundation.
• There are reasonable grounds to suspect that by her Twitter posts Ms Baker has committed offences of criminal harassment.
• Ms Baker told deliberate and malicious lies on Twitter (by saying she had not dropped a defence of justification) for the purpose of raising money under false pretences.
• Ms Baker is guilty of 16 allegations of stalking against a proven child abuse victim that was so serious that it justified a lifelong restraining order being imposed by the Court.
• In many (but not all) of the 16 counts, Ms Baker’s stalking was racist.
• Ms Baker is guilty of harassment and the conduct may amount to stalking.
• Ms Baker stalked a victim of child rape for years.
• Ms Baker is depraved.
• She tried to contact a paedophile priest to try and undermine his criminal conviction.
• Ms Baker accused the paedophile priest’s victim of perjury on Twitter. This accusation was false, malicious and criminal.
• Ms Baker is a racist stalker.
• Ms Baker is worse even than most racist stalkers. – [My actual words were, quoting Basic Instinct, “So, we got a once in a lifetime, top of the line looney tuney”]

I defended all of these meanings as true. Esther Baker failed to reply correctly to my defences. Neither she nor the court identified any procedural deficiency with the pleadings of my defence to the counterclaim. The judge considered my defences along with a partial draft reply from Baker and concluded there was in fact no chance of defeating my various positive defences (Americans call them, “affirmative” defences), in particular, the defence of Truth. Judgement was entered in my favour in relation to all of the publications on 17 August 2022. That judgement was published by the judge as case law and is here. The judgement is long, so for those short of time just read paragraphs 94 and 96 –

“94. For these reasons, I am satisfied under CPR 3.9 that Ms Baker’s statements of case disclose no reasonable grounds for bringing the claim, that her statements of case are an abuse of the court’s process and are likely to obstruct the just disposal of the proceedings, and that they fail to comply with the requirements of Practice Direction 53B and the Griffiths Order. I am also satisfied under CPR 24 that Ms Baker has no real prospect of succeeding on her claims and there is no other compelling reason why the case should be disposed of at a trial.”

“96. Consequently:
i) I will strike out the Amended Counterclaim.
ii) I will not grant relief from sanctions in respect of Ms Baker’s failure to serve an Amended Reply to Defence of Counterclaim in accordance with para 39 of the Griffiths Order.
iii) I will not grant further time to serve an Amended Reply to Defence of Counterclaim.
iv) I will not give permission to Ms Baker to file further or alternative pleadings.
v) I will enter judgment on the Counterclaim against Ms Baker and in favour of Mr Smith.”

It is all true. Esther Baker used the Twitter platform for stalking, raising money under false pretences (on a subject where many of the donors would likely be vulnerable) and attempted to work with a convicted paedophile to undermine his conviction and harm the victim that the paedophile had sodomised at the age of five. Twitter had the first two of the many relevant judgements against Baker.

This failure by Twitter to deal with wrongdoing even when metaphorically shoved in their faces is a legitimate matter of public concern. In fact, at the time I received a quote from the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism in the UK I never got around to using. They had general concerns about the policing of anti-Semitism on the platform and a spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said:

“From their pitiful responses to the hate spewed daily on their platforms, it is evident that social media companies will stop at nothing to make a profit. It is time for these deeply damaging and irresponsible companies to be held accountable for the hatred they help to spread. Antisemites are able to use Twitter to reach millions and by failing to act on anti-Jewish incitement Twitter is enabling it. Social networks are allowing racism to run rampant and it is high time they were regulated like all other mass media.”

Now, in the meantime, Elon Musk decided to publicly buy Twitter. He did a quick deal, but took steps to protect his position by requiring an agreement that Twitter make full and truthful disclosures on some matters as contractual requirements. Twitter is presently suing Musk in Delaware to complete the deal. According to his countersuit against Twitter, the company averred at 4.11 of the merger agreement that there “is no suit, action or proceeding pending or, to the Knowledge of the Company, threatened in writing” nor any “investigation by any Governmental Authority involving the Company or any of its Subsidiaries”, that would lead to a material adverse event.

It seems to me that there are three matters which, if known to Twitter, should possibly have been disclosed. Firstly, my written threat to take the matter with UK Labour to the Information Commissioner, who has the power to levy massive fines measured in percentage of turnover. The second matter was the proceedings between myself and Esther Baker. Twitter knew about those proceedings because I specifically informed the Twitter litigation team and Vijaya Gadde in writing in a letter to them of 10 April 2020. Leaving that aside, if they were monitoring my output it is difficult to see how they could not know of Ms Baker’s claim. Thirdly, there are mine and former UK MP John Hemming’s threats to issue proceedings against Twitter in the High Court. Those threats have never been withdrawn and are being revisited in light of the outcome of Smith v Baker. A claim under the GDPR or the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 would still be well in time. We even wrote to major shareholders.

The actual and threatened proceedings all had the potential to seriously harm Twitter and Vijaya Gadde. Gadde is a high-profile executive. The ultimate effect of all these factual determinations is that Vijaya has let Esther Baker remain on Twitter despite multiple court rulings finding that Baker had used the platform for stalking, libel and attempting to assist a paedophile against his victim. Now, in the most recent case I have defended as truth the allegation that Baker also used Twitter to try to obtain money by false statements. Obviously that is a huge failing of trust and safety. It could perhaps garner significant publicity and affect the share price or encourage legislation or regulatory action.

Twitter knew most of these facts at the time. It is difficult for me to believe that information sent directly to Vijaya Gadde and which led to a letter from lawyers instructed by Twitter about an article allegedly defaming her could not have been known to her. It is clear that the article about the GDPR / Data Protection issues was identified as a legal risk. In their official response to me, Twitter said as follows,

“Twitter disputes the factual characterizations and legal conclusions in your email and your draft blog post. We reserve all rights and defenses.”

One does not reserve all defences if one does not consider that there is at least some risk of a claim or prosecution.

We also even wrote to some large shareholders threatening litigation.

There are also some new matters. In the claim by Baker, I successfully defended the contention that,

“Ms Baker told deliberate and malicious lies on Twitter (by saying she had not dropped a defence of justification) for the purpose of raising money under false pretences.”

In light of the outcome of the case, I will ask Twitter to look again at Baker’s account and also that of her friend Mr Goodwin. I will be writing to Twitter’s lawyers and asking them if they disclosed the matters above to Mr Musk as part of the merger, and if not why not. I will also ask Mr Musk’s lawyers whether they were aware of these circumstances and whether they think they were material. If any single one of these circumstances, which were almost certainly personally known to Vijaya, were material then that could be sufficient to establish fraud, and for Mr Musk’s defence and counter-claim to succeed.

Even if it is not fraud, not reckless, and not material to Musk’s case, it is still pretty despicable. Esther Baker is a deranged stalker. A once in a lifetime looney-tuney. She is not unlike a proper horror movie villain except more banal. Twitter has failed to protect its users or her other victims. This is a matter Vijaya Gadde was clearly personally seized of. In contrast, Milo was banned for far less objectionable posts than the hallucinatory anti-Semitism espoused by Alan Goodwin or the racist stalking of Baker.

Certainly, further revelation of Twitter’s despicable failure to ban @Ciabaudo and @Esther9982 for misuse of their platform does seem to me to have the potential to damage Twitter’s reputation. The responses, if any, will be posted here.