A new series of leaked emails reveals discredited ‘left’ journalist Paul Mason’s legal meltdown after his collaboration with state security services was exposed. Mason’s emails with intelligence-linked figures were first outed by The Grayzone in 2022. He now works at an arms industry-funded ‘think tank’.

Publicly, Mason responded to the 2022 leaks with a ‘non-denial denial’ claiming the emails “may be” “altered or fake” and denied recognising a bizarre (and now well-known) chart he sent to intelligence assets showing the links he imagined existed among left groups, left media and Russian and Chinese state actors. But the leaked emails show him admitting to lawyers that he did create it — and trying to find angles to wage a legal war on The Grayzone and other left outlets that publicised his collaboration.

The latest leaks come hot on the heels of Paul Mason threatening Green leader Zack Polanski with ten years in prison. In an X post, Polanski had mocked Mason’s chart:

Confirmed: Paul Mason ‘secret state’ contacts

Mason’s lawyers were to pour cold water on his wish to “deplatform/demonetise” The Grayzone. Like him, however, they were apparently keen to launch a criminal prosecution against The Grayzone in the US — presumably on the basis of his unfounded claims that they were funded by or working for Russia.

But even the lawyers told Mason that he had no realistic prospect of arguing that he wasn’t in “contact with Britain’s ‘secret state’” — because clearly he was.

Paul Mason had asked his lawyers to review a rant he had drafted, in which he denied collaborating and accused his critics of deliberately putting his life in danger. They responded with an edit ‘toning down a bit’ his denials because it was “difficult to say you don’t have any contact with ‘Britain’s secret state’”:

Paul Mason mocked and self-owned

Following these revelations, Mason’s public posts were routinely mocked by left-wingers pointing to his disgrace-by-email. So too was his string of failed attempts to secure selection to contest a parliamentary seat for Labour.

The pro-war Mason was also caught, and exposed exclusively by Skwawkbox, engaging in a pro-Starmer, pro-Israel meltdown and accusing an audience member of antisemitism. He then posted to Twitter a made-up quote he attributed to her in an attempt to defend his smears.

For full disclosure, Paul Mason also self-owned when an attack on Skwawkbox went wrong. Mason tried to compare Skwawkbox to the right-wing press after Skwawkbox exposed Keir Starmer’s involvement in ‘Beergate’. Just by the by, Starmer did get fined, but the fine disappeared after Durham’s chief constable was leaned on from above. Anyway, Mason’s attack on Skwawkbox backfired badly, with hundreds of respondents praising the factual coverage and mocking Mason for supporting the Brylcreemed blancmange, eg:

These episodes further fuelled the “avalanche of derision” every time he posted — and didn’t persuade Starmer to smile on his would-be candidacies.

Back to the latest leaked emails. Discussing his chart with his legal team, Mason told them that he had only shared it with pro-Ukraine war academic Emma Briant. In fact, even if that claim were true it would not change its significance.

Briant claims to be “one of the world’s leading experts on information warfare and propaganda”. She has also been accused of being an intelligence services asset and engaged in extensive correspondence with Mason and intelligence-linked figures. Like Mason, Briant has tried to use lawyers to silence those discussing her security state connections.

‘The politicians are outed’

The new leaks also confirm the extent of Mason’s cosiness with a range of unsavoury establishment figures. These include Keir Starmer — himself a “long-time servant of the British security state” — and John Healey, now defence secretary, as well as an unnamed “senior ex-military person”. Mason fretted that if his emails with these characters were exposed, “the politicians are outed” and bemoaned the “implicit pressure” this created:

As Mason told Jaffey on September 29 2022, “[Kit Klarenberg] still has all my correspondence with Keir, John Healey and a senior ex military person so there is implicit pressure.” However, it was not until February 2025 that Mason’s contacts with Starmer and Healey were publicly disclosed.

Mason further revealed to Jaffey that a figure he described as a “former Labour foreign policy advisor who now works in corporate security” had been exposed through his leaked email exchanges. He worried that if the full content of his email account’s sent and received files was publicized, “the politicians are outed.”

“At that point,” he fretted, “the attacks will be reframed as a wider attack on UK democracy.”

Mason’s emails to his lawyers also reinforced his apparent connections to the security state. He told them that he had been in discussion with the government’s ‘National Cyber Security Centre’.

Lawfare

Despite the numerous setbacks and the knock-backs from his legal advisers, Mason “remained determined” to wage lawfare on his critics. This includes enlisting the UK’s National Crime Agency against The Grayzone and journalist Kit Klarenberg:

Despite these setbacks, Mason remained determined to weaponize the law against The Grayzone for the high crime of factual journalism. On December 16 2022, he informed Jaffey he’d “given a verbal witness statement to two officers” from Britain’s National Crime Agency. The officers, Mason wrote, had “indicated it was likely the UK will pass the investigation into the hack on me over to US law enforcement, and that the statement needs to be robust enough for the US courts.”

So far, at least, this wish remains unfulfilled.

In none of the leaked communications with his lawyers does Paul Mason appear to deny that he was working with intelligence assets, intelligence-linked figures or indeed British intelligence directly to target sites and individuals he didn’t like. This means, as Klarenberg puts it in the latest exposé, that:

The faded journalist remains dogged by allegations that he was himself a British intelligence asset all along, with even prominent mainstream reporters posing the question to Mason in social media exchanges.

Whether this triggers yet another public meltdown is, for the moment, a matter of conjecture. For now, he seems to be obsessing over the Greens — despite insisting they have no chance of defeating Labour — and, of course, with promoting the Ukraine war.

Read the latest Grayzone revelations in full here.

Featured image provided via author

By Skwawkbox

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