Nadine Dorries MP Smears Journalist with Plagiarism Falsehood, Refuses to Apologise

From Bedfordshire on Sunday:

Nadine Dorries refused to apologise after an outburst against this newspaper on Twitter.

The MP… took to the social network site to accuse BoS of lifting the contents of a letter she sent to a rival publication.

…But she was faced with angry demands to say sorry after the document, issued in her name by a PA, was proved to have been sent to BoS in response to a question four days earlier.

However, the MP later claimed she had said SHE hadn’t sent it…

The short version: BoS hack Adam Thompson contacted Dorries’ office for a quote about a strip club; he received an email headed “Dear Adam”, followed by a passage of first-person writing (“I am totally opposed to the objectification of women and on moral grounds…”), and signed off “Nadine”. However, the email was forwarded to him by Dorries’ intern; having failed with her plagiarism smear, Dorries simply changed the story to the claim that she had not been responsible for sending the email, and that Thompson should have known it was not intended for him. The ease with which she abandons one falsehood before self-righteously investing in another is either ludicrous or chilling, probably depending on one’s own experiences with Dorries.

I reproduce below most of her exchange with Thompson; although the row may seem trivial in itself, it once again shows that Dorries has a flagrant – and perhaps sociopathic – disregard for truth. She is a liar and a bully, and if her party is too feeble to censure her we can only hope that she will be repudiated by voters at the first opportunity. I’ve documented other instances in which in she has smeared various individuals, in at least one instance with the assistance of the Bedfordshire on Sunday.

The initial exchange took place on 21 October:

@NadineDorriesMP
Absolutely shocked that BoS have written ‘ in a letter to the BoS the MP’ my letter was to the Beds Times and Citizen, the BoS just lifted

@Adam_BoS
@NadineDorriesMP why was it sent to me on Friday morning then Nadine?!

?@Adam_BoS
@NadineDorriesMP and in response to a question I’d asked you four days before.

@NadineDorriesMP
@Adam_BoS well it wasn’t sent to you from me

@Adam_BoS
@NadineDorriesMP yet it says ‘Nadine’ at the foot of the email. I’ll even send you the email for you to check over.

@NadineDorriesMP
@Adam_BoS who sent it to you on Friday? All of my staff bar one were in the constituency covering surgeries and the bar one didn’t send it

@Adam_BoS
@NadineDorriesMP let me check first thing in the morning. Either Friday or Thursday. I will say this nothing was lifted at all.

@NadineDorriesMP
@adam_bos do please, because you could not possibly have got it on Friday morning.

@NadineDorriesMP
@Adam_BoS And I will say this, you did NOT get it from me.

@Adam_BoS
@NadineDorriesMP Found it. It was sent to me Thurs by Andrea Gordon in response to an email sent to your office email. It starts ‘Dear Adam’

@Adam_BoS
Incase anyone thinks I’m telling porky pies here’s the letter @NadineDorriesMP said I lifted. Notice the ‘Dear Adam’ [Link to picture]

@NadineDorriesMP
@Chrisg_BoS @adam_bos Well, as you can see, it didn’t come from me and shouldn’t have gone to you.

?@Adam_BoS
@NadineDorriesMP @chrisg_bos Yet it did. Addressed to me, replying to an email sent to your address and signed off with the name ‘Nadine’.

@Adam_BoS
@NadineDorriesMP @chrisg_bos Nothing was lifted at all. So how about RT that to your near 11,000 followers along with an apology.

The Bedfordshire on Sunday story about Dorries’ claims appeared yesterday; she registered her objection:

?@NadineDorriesMP
Apparently, the Beds on Sunday has printed a ridiculous story based on my Tweets and my re Tweets.What happened to proffessional [sic] journalism?

@GoJonnyBananas
What @NadineDorriesMP isn’t telling you is that she claimed no-one wrote to @bedfordnews despite documentary proof

@NadineDorriesMP
@GoJonnyBananas I said I hadn’t, and I hadn’t. It was a copy of a letter an itern forwarded on – wont happen again though.

@Lindsay_70
@GoJonnyBananas @NadineDorriesMP ahh ur a lib dem says it all really

?@NadineDorriesMP
@Lindsay_70 @gojonnybananas Yep, that’s why I’ve blocked him. Blocking is bliss

@NadineDorriesMP
@nannachicken @johnjohnbarton @lindsay_70 Facts were right – I said I hadn’t sent it and I hadn’t. how often do I have to say that?

?@NadineDorriesMP
@nannachicken @johnjohnbarton @lindsay_70 I can assure you, the Beds on Sunday have a lot more to apologise to me for than I do to them.

Tim Ireland – who has been the most seriously smeared by Dorries – has added a pertinent comment to the BoS article (link added):

Bedfordshire on Sunday were given ample warning about this MP’s capacity for evasion and invention. I have little sympathy for them, especially when they continue to refuse to retract damaging untruths that they have published/enabled on her behalf. If there are things that Chris Gill wishes to put in the past, then there needs to be a threshold at which your editor says ‘enough’ and finally recognises (and seeks to make amends for) the times he has placed far too much trust in Dorries’ demonstrably calculated falsehoods.

3 Responses

  1. […] I can think of – Richard Bartholomew – has come to refer to Dorries’ evident disregard for the truth as being ‘perhaps sociopathic’. I move to the feminist argument. As the mother of three […]

  2. […] the only way she could involuntarily cease to be an MP is if she became bankrupt. (Financially, not ethically, I mean.) She hasn’t consistently voted with her party for a long time in Parliamentary […]

  3. […] recently, Dorries refused to back down after accusing a journalist of lifting the content of a letter she had sent to a rival newspaper, […]

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