The hacking claim by prince Harry against the Mail begins soon at London’s High Court. Meanwhile, a notorious private investigator says claims about his involvement in bugging for the newspaper are wrong.
This comes shortly after another key private investigator last month sensationally claimed his statement against the newspaper had been faked.
The previous admissions by Jonathan Rees and Gavin Burrows were crucial in persuading Doreen Lawrence to join the ‘superclaim’ against the Mail.
The newspaper vehemently denies it bugged and hacked all seven claimants. They include Elton John and his husband David Furnish, Elizabeth Hurley, Sadie Frost and Simon Hughes.
Dispatches digs into the Mail story
Channel 4’s Dispatches programme has sent us details of the story and a transcript of the interview between Rees and reporter Cathy Newman.
For over a year Channel 4’s Dispatches has pored over pages and pages of court documents. And it’s come across serious concerns about how the evidence has been gathered and its reliability.
A key figure in the legal team against the Mail is Graham Johnson, a man with a controversial past.
The convicted phone hacker and former tabloid journalist has admitted faking stories. But he has now reinvented himself as a crusader against corrupt journalism.
Johnson, a paid-up member of the claimant’s legal research team, was involved in trying to get Burrows and then Rees to assist the super claim.
Now Burrows and Rees are making allegations that there were offers of money for co-operation. Separately, documents have emerged that even Johnson doubted the reliability of Burrows, who in turn claims he was involved in getting information from Rees.
Is the £38m super claim on a knife edge? Or will the Mail have to pay out millions in settlements as other papers have done? And what does it mean for prince Harry’s campaign against the press, and for his relationship with his family?
Jonathan Rees, in an exclusive interview, claims information naming him as the source of a key part of Lawrence’s case is wrong.
Court documents show that prince Harry alerted Lawrence to potential claims she might have against the Mail. After being provided with more information, she decided to sue the papers in 2022.
In her statement submitted to the court, seen by Dispatches, Lawrence claims that private investigators admitted tapping her landlines, hacking her voicemails and bugging a café where she used to hold meetings.
The statement says that private detective Rees confirmed that he had done things for the Daily Mail aimed at secretly stealing information about her.
Rees’ denial
In his exclusive interview with Cathy Newman, Rees says this is wrong:
Cathy Newman:
So Doreen Lawrence’s witness statement says, and I’ll just quote it to you. ‘Jonathan Rees confirmed he had done things for the Daily Mail and Steven Wright, aimed at secretly stealing information about me and the investigations into Stephen’s murder’. So, did you ever confirm all of that?
Jonathan Rees:
Yes that is exactly what I’d heard and what I knew was on offer. I’d been offered by other agents to assist in this surveillance. But I didn’t get involved.
Rees told Dispatches repeatedly he did not get involved in the alleged bugging of Lawrence – Dispatches asked him if this position conflicts with what is in Lawrence’s statement submitted to court.
Cathy Newman:
But Doreen Lawrence’s witness statement is based on your confirmation that you had done the bugging operation for the Mail.
Jonathan Rees:
Right, well they’re going to have to rethink that, and their legal team is going to have to re-think that. Listen,
Cathy Newman:
Well that blows a hole in their case against the Mail if they have to rethink that doesn’t it?
Jonathan Rees:
Not really because it was done.
All I can say to support that woman is yes I did hear about it, yes I was invited to be a part of the team, yes I saw, I did see, factual, transcripts, I know it was going on, I know that the surveillance teams were being used against her and her family.
But I can’t provide any documentary evidence for that.
There are also questions about Rees’ possible motives in relation to the Mail. Rees has always named former Daily Mail crime reporter Stephen Wright as being involved. For years Wright has written about rumours surrounding Rees and the murder of Rees’ business partner Daniel Morgan.
Cathy Newman:
Some people might think you’ve got a grudge against the Mail and Stephen Wright because of what he’s written about you.
Jonathan Rees:
Not at all…My grudge was against the Met Police not against Steve Wright. Steve Wright didn’t arrest…I don’t bear any grudge against Steve, Steve Wright.
Rees maintains throughout his interview that the Mail did pay private detectives to investigate Lawrence. But he has offered no proof, and no evidence that the Mail knowingly commissioned illegal information gathering.
Jonathan Rees:
I think Wright would have been foolish to sit down with the private detectives and say: bug their telephones, bug that cafe.
Plant those devices on every single table in the cafe. Bug their home. Do the surveillance on them. It would have been an open request for information.
Here you are, chaps. Go and get as much information on this family. We want to know who they are, where they’re from.
Cathy Newman:
It’s all about proof as well isn’t it? I mean, do you think now that the Mail did anything illegal?
Jonathan Rees:
No.
Investigative journalist Michael Gillard, who has also looked in detail at this case, tells Dispatches:
He’s [Rees] creating a massive gap between what he said …… and what he’s saying now, as this litigation becomes more real and we head towards trial in January next year…
I was staggered by the possibility that Jonathan Rees was going to be put forward as a witness of truth in a claim brought by Doreen Lawrence against the Mail. And I picked up from my sources that one question was being asked by various people. How trustworthy is Jonathan Rees?
The Mail says allegations of unlawful information gathering in relation to Lawrence are “appalling and utterly groundless smears”.
Money for dirt?
Questions have been raised in court about whether the credibility of some information has been affected by money being offered for it.
Dispatches has spoken to private detectives who say that Johnson approached them to provide information about their dealings with the Mail. In his interview Rees also described how, he says, Johnson approached him.
Rees’ private detective agency earned hundreds of thousands of pounds from the News of the World before the paper was shut down.
Rees has told Dispatches that Johnson came to him around seven years ago, offering to pay for stories that could implicate the tabloids, including the Mail.
Jonathan Rees:
They offered some high rewards for that, whether the information was factual or not.
Cathy Newman:
You say he offered you high rewards, I mean tell us how explicit he was about that.
Jonathan Rees:
Well, it could be two and a half thousand pounds a month, if not more, for life.
Cathy Newman:
For life?
Jonathan Rees:
For life.
Cathy Newman:
And you said he didn’t mind whether what you told him was true or not.
Jonathan Rees:
Not interested.
Cathy Newman:
But what did he say explicitly to you on that point?
Jonathan Rees:
It was that as long as this statement that I made and because of my history and my connections with the newspaper, it would add more credence to their… them through solicitors providing backup and information for the claimants and the other celebrities but it didn’t matter what I said. But if I signed the statement, they would use it.
Cathy Newman:
And he was clear with you that what you told him would be used in a court action.
Jonathan Rees:
Yes.
Cathy Newman:
Two and a half thousand pounds a month for life, how did you react to that kind of money?
Jonathan Rees:
I wasn’t interested.
Cathy Newman:
Tell us why not.
Jonathan Rees:
I’m wise enough and old enough to realise that I’m not going to sign untruthful statements for Graham or for anybody at all that would support them in legal action.
Rees could not provide any proof of Johnson’s offer, so Dispatches only has his word this ever happened.
Another private detective makes similar claims. Gavin Burrows, long suspected of hacking for the tabloids, says Johnson contacted him in 2020. He wanted to speak to him about his investigation into unlawful information gathering by the tabloids.
Burrows also said Johnson offered him money for a book deal. In 2021, in the case against the Mail, a statement in Burrows’ name made shocking allegations of illegal information gathering on behalf of the Mail.
Last month, Burrows made a new statement public in which he claims the earlier statement was a forgery and that he had never carried out illegal activities for the Mail.
Separately he also claims that on another occasion Johnson floated, jokingly, the idea that Burrows could get money for signing a witness statement.
Tracking the sources of funds
There’s been speculation for years on the sources of funding for research by Johnson into the activities of newspapers.
Dispatches has discovered how one of Max Mosley’s companies has given a publishing company owned by Johnson a half million-pound loan.
Before his death in 2021 Mosley, the son of British fascist Oswald, was a prominent campaigner for press reform.
Johnson’s company Yellow Press has published memoirs from former journalists and private investigators whose information has also been mentioned in legal claims made against newspapers.
Dispatches also revealed how the father of James Stunt, long a target of Daily Mail investigations, has also provided money to Johnson. Stunt, the former husband of Petra Ecclestone, has a conviction for racially aggravated harassment. He was acquitted of money laundering charges earlier this year.
Geoff Stunt told Dispatches that the apparent claim that he:
funded research into illegal activities at the Daily Mail as some kind of ‘revenge’ … is false and misconceived.
And that he had:
funded research into whether he and his family members had been subject to ANL’s [Associated Newspapers Limited] unlawful information gathering activities [but] has never funded research into illegal activities at the Daily Mail for the purposes of the present claims.
Actor Hugh Grant says he funded Johnson’s research into rumours the paper had offered money to murderer Ian Huntley.
He told Dispatches:
In 2015 Graham Johnson asked me to help fund research into… reports that Daily Mail journalists had offered payments to Ian Huntley, subsequently convicted of the murder of two young girls at Soham.
If the research had established the truth of these reports it would have been a matter for the police, not the civil courts… I have never used the services of Graham Johnson, whether directly or indirectly, for evidence gathering for litigation of any kind.
After months of claims and counter claims, the judge now faces a tough call. It’s down to him to cut through this very tangled case.
Prince Harry versus one of the country’s biggest newspaper groups. Whatever the ruling, it could send shockwaves through the press and the public.
Possible outcomes
Veteran Royal correspondents and experts have spoken to Dispatches:
Wesley Kerr:
This is potentially one of the biggest court cases that will occur in 2026, and therefore a huge story…It’s really a titanic struggle between two powerful segments in our society… Prince Harry sees himself as St George slaying the dragon of illegal activity by the press. So his mother, he saw as a victim of press intrusion. He thinks that his whole life he has been a victim of press intrusion.
Richard Palmer:
His judgment will be on trial in this case as well. And it may be it may backfire on him…if that [the case] collapses Harry could have egg all over his face.
Simon Vigar:
It may affect his attempts to reconcile with his family and it may damage his ability to reconcile with the nation.
Adam Macqueen:
The question that hangs over this is how much it is about suing over potential unlawful things that went on many years ago and how much of it is coming from a sort of crusade against the press…whichever way it goes, it’s going to be enormously significant.
Associated Newspapers (publisher of the Mail and Mail on Sunday) denies all allegations.
Graham Johnson did not respond to Channel 4’s letter setting out the matters raised about him in this film.
The solicitor for another member of the Research Team said however that:
Graham Johnson is part of the Claimants’ Research Team… Any work… done in furtherance of this litigation has been done subject to legal advice on the rules of evidence and any suggestion that witnesses have been paid for making any claims in witness statements is categorially rejected.
He also said that all the things Dispatches was reporting as said by Jonathan Rees and Gavin Burrows about Graham Johnson were “defamatory”.
Featured image via The Prince vs The Paper: Harry, Hacking & The Mail: Dispatches – Available to watch and stream on Channel 4 from 8pm on Thursday 11 December
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