John Smythe Investigations provides some answers to Mia’s questions

I am indebted to John for taking the time to cast some light on the areas of concern raised by Mia’s questions outlined in yesterday’s article. Given the ground to be covered it is a longer than normal article but for those seeking more information on how the plot was formed and protected the information is invaluable.

JOHN SMYTHE INVESTIGATIONS.

“I said I would get back to you Mia after your comprehensive reply to one of my posts and so here it is. I have included your questions and my attempts at answers to some of them in a way that I hope is easy for everyone to follow.” 

Mia:
I have also been through all the evidence and there are quite a few things that do not make sense at all if this was only made in Scotland. There were so many flaws in the process that unless Sturgeon, the civil service and elements of the SNP had not been fiercely protected by the COPFS and the state itself, they would have been chucked out on the spot if not sent to prison.

John Smythe (me!):
They are most definitely being protected by the COPFS of that I have no doubt. For me either the FM herself or the then Lord Advocate must have given the women certain guarantees that they would be protected no matter what. Who else could have given them such assurances that would have satisfied them? The Crown Agent? Leslie Evans? Not for me. It needed to be someone with some real clout. This guarantee from on high probably explains why whenever any of the women have complained subsequently, they seem to be good at that although not very good at getting their stories straight sadly, to the Crown Office they always seem to act on it such as with Craig Murray and Mark Hirst etc whilst they drag their heels and kick into the long grass other things which are far more serious and deserving of their attention. 

Mia:
For instance, why wasn’t Liz Lloyd demanded by the Fabiani Farce to declare in person like the rest of the civil servants and was allowed to get off so lightly with some watered down statement that we cannot even be sure if she wrote it herself or was written on her behalf?

John Smythe:
Liz Lloyd was someone the Committee wanted to hear from directly. That is true. Nicola Sturgeon in her evidence session stated repeatedly that a senior official (guess who?) would be happy to provide testimony in private. What she never said though and shamefully what not a single member of the Committee thought to pull her up on is that this person would only give evidence in private provided that the members all signed up to a legal agreement which would have prevented them from asking her key questions. Questions that were crucial to understanding what had happened. 

This is the title of the article that reveals that information and is well worth a read:

Scottish Government paid thousands to top lawyers trying to block MSP questions on Alex Salmond case.
By John Ferguson.
7 FEB 2021.
Daily Record/Sunday Mail. 

The background of Nicola Irvine, representing this senior official is rather interesting as Peter Cherbi has pointed out previously. 

In the end some of the committee members rejected the demands and this person never gave testimony and instead provided two written submissions. As to who wrote them I believe that Liz Lloyd did in fact write them. They show knowledge and contain a level of arrogance and self-righteous indignation at the idea that they would betray the confidence of others that it could only have come from someone as repugnant as her. Also in her additional submission she stupidly, in my opinion, draws attention to the query from the Daily Record on 23 AUGUST. That after being notified of the interest from that paper Salmond’s legal team UNUSUALLY CHOSE NOT TO ACT ON THAT INFORMATION. What she is talking about there is the failure to get the interdict that evening which would have stopped the story from being revealed by the Daily Record that night. That is the window of opportunity for journalists that David Clegg also mentions in his book, Break-Up. In order to take advantage of that window of opportunity a journalist would have needed to have known it existed in the first place. Only by getting access to the email sent by Salmond’s lawyers to the SG ones which revealed they would not seek an interdict that evening could Clegg have known about that opportunity and acted on it. Lloyd in her submission is acknowledging that she understood the potential problem. The question is did she know it at the time? 

Mia:
Why was there coaching of UK civil servants seen as necessary?

John Smythe:
It was seen as necessary because they did not want to get caught out giving false testimony/lying under oath. That coaching, that would not have been cheap either, proved to be worthless though as Leslie Evans, James Hynd, John Somers, Judith Mackinnon and Barbara Allison etc all provided false testimony in their sessions as I have shown in my articles previously. Not speculation either. It can be shown in the submitted evidence in black and white. 

Mia:
Why wasn’t McKinnon demanded to give evidence either in person or via video like everybody else and she was allowed to do so by phone so nobody could assess if she was alone in the room, she was reading from a script or if the MI5 was giving her the answers?

John Smythe:
Judith Mackinnon actually has previous for being phoned into meetings. She was phoned into the secret meeting of 16 JANUARY 2018 that also involved Nicola Richards and Ms A. At this secret meeting Ms A also amended her complaint. Right after this meeting she put in this amended formal complaint to Nicola Richards via email in which she made no reference at all to that meeting they had just had. Instead she referred to the one she had with Gillian Russell on 22 NOVEMBER 2017 instead. There can be no innocent explanation for that in my opinion. Nicola Richards, Judith Mackinnon and Ms A all deliberately tried to conceal that this meeting had happened. This can be shown by the formal complaint of Ms A and also the emails between Nicola Richards and Judith Mackinnon where she appoints her to the role of the investigating officer. 

Mia:
What on earth was an ex-MI5, crown agent doing in COPFS throwing the police into a goose chase trying to stitch up Mr Salmond? How many crown agents are there in England’s prosecution service? Why is one in Scotland at all?

John Smythe:
In my experience there is no such thing as an ex-MI5 officer. You are in it for life. You never really retire. It could be something as simple as just meeting someone for a quick coffee and passing on some information to them. David Harvie, the Crown Agent in question went to great pains in his session to try and convince others that he had never read the Decision Report. He repeated it numerous times. The then Lord Advocate actually stated that it was his decision that it should be passed to him. It is worth remembering that the Procedure did not allow for that at all. It should have been passed onto the Police not the Crown Office. It was done that way so as to try and give the complaints more seriousness than they deserved and to pressure the Police into acting. 

Mia:
Why the rush to involve the Metropolitan Police in the investigation of Mr Salmond? And who had the authority to bring London Police into the matter? That could not have been somebody in Scotland.

John Smythe:
Maybe certain members of the SNP who are used as informants by the security services wanted a favour done in return. Wanting dirt on someone else for example. If it suits both parties something could easily have been set up. This is speculation of course which is something I try to stay away from in my articles. 

Mia:
Why upon Mr David Davies presenting his statement in the house of commons showing the damage Sturgeon was doing by keeping the head of the COPFS in the cabinet avoiding the separation of powers, nothing was made to enforce separation of the powers when that problem does not exist at UK level and when the problem with not separating the powers has been known since even before the Scottish gov was reconvened? Was this a back door being left open deliberately by the state to get its hand in and manipulate the process in case of need?

John Smythe:
Perhaps the UK decided to give Sturgeon and her useless government enough rope to hang themselves with? The SNP are making a great case for the union these days. I still can’t quite believe just how bad things are in Scotland. 

Mia:
Why when Douglas Ross reported Leslie Evans to her line manager Mark Sedwill in August 2020 for refusing to comment on claims that female officials were advised not to work alone with Alex Salmond, we heard nothing of it? 

John Smythe:
Leslie Evans actually wrote a letter to the Committee stating she would be happy to write to them to provide details about that. Why she did not think to supply the answer to that in that actual letter is something of a mystery. Disgracefully there seems to have been no follow up to that at all from the Committee. 

Mia:
Why weren’t all the civil servants involved on this sacked by Mark Sedwill once it was clear that their botched job had costed Scotland’s taxpayers millions of pounds? Mark Sedwill was the head of the civil service and yet all these people went scot free despite evident breaches of the civil service code of conduct. He was ultimately accountable for all this.

John Smythe:
I don’t know the answer to that. I would have been bringing charges against some of them, never mind just sacking them.

Mia:
Why didn’t Mark Sedwill instruct an immediate formal investigation into the conduct of the civil service in Scotland and the permanent secretary and when the leak to the Daily Record took place, as there was an investigation when memogate took place while Carmichael was Secretary of State for Scotland?

John Smythe:
Again I do not know the answer to that. The investigation into the leak in Scotland if you could even call it that was a total waste of time. 

Mia:
Why did Mark Sedwill leave his post as head of the Civil Service in September 2020 at the time when the Holyrood inquiry MSPs asked the Court of session to release key legal papers from Mr Salmond’s civil case, and when Leslie Evans was forced to apologise for giving wrong information to the parliamentary inquiry, when it was discovered that Liz Lloyd did take part in meetings about the case, despite Evans having said before she did not (from Holyrood, 10 September 2020, written by Liam Kirkaldi)?

John Smythe:
Maybe he got a better job offer elsewhere? It was not just Leslie Evans who provided false information in regards to that either. The then Lord Advocate also said the same in regards to Special Advisors at those meetings. 

Mia:
Who instructed the COPFS to suppress the information of the whatsApp messages of the vietnam group or the procedure? Who controls the COPFS? Who controls the crown agent within the COPFS?

John Smythe:
Perhaps it was the Crown Office who made that decision on their own? Could it be because the assurances given to those women may have made up what was part of those messages?

Mia:
Why would the UK government/state had any interest in keeping those messages secret unless they showed a clear link to something that was not in the SNP or even Scotland?

John Smythe:
Perhaps the UK government perceive Alex Salmond as a bigger threat to the UK than the current FM?

Mia:
Why there was a collusion to keep the names of the alphabetes secret when it is not mandatory in Scotland’s cases?

John Smythe:
Probably because if people knew who they were then it would be impossible to conclude that there was not a malicious plot against Alex Salmond. Also I have yet to find a reason as to why the actor cannot be named or why he was never subject to cross examination during the trial. 

Mia:
Why was Mark Sedwill parachuted to the house of lords In September 2020 despite having spectacularly failed in his duty to make the civil servants in Scotland follow the civil service code of conduct and despite the civil service in Scotland under his watch, breaching the GDPR by leaking confidential information to a newspaper?

John Smythe:
You would be hard pressed to find anyone in the House of Lords who was not a total waste of space much like the House of Lords itself. 

Mia:
How could Mark Sedwill turn a blind eye to the superlative incompetence of Leslie Evans conducting the investigation into who effected the leak to the daily record?

John Smythe:
I don’t know.

Mia:
The allegations against Mr Salmond in November 2017 were not an isolated case. During October and November 2017 more than 12 allegations of sexual nature emerged against politicians of the UK. Interestingly, some of the accusations against politicians of the labour party were made by the victim but never disclosing the name of the accused, just like Monica Lennon did in Scotland. In other words, they seemed to be more to give weight and credibility to the movement rather than to expose anybody in particular. 

John Smythe:
It seems a lot of people jumped on the MeToo bandwagon like flies on a cowpat. 

Mia:
Mr Salmond was the only one that, as far as I know, was dragged into a criminal court case, but was not the only one subjected to a unfair and seemingly unlawful complaints procedure. The other case was that of Carl Sargent, But these false allegations and unlawful complaint procedure resulted in the death of this politician. Yet, nobody was held responsible for that. The “procedure” to which Mr Sargent was subjected to started almost at the same time as that of Mr Salmond.

John Smythe:
I have not had the time to look into that of Carl Sargent, Mia. I have more than enough on my plate as it is already!

Mia:
The first complaint against Mr Salmond was received if I am not mistaken around the 5th November 2017. 2017 the Scottish government had created the first version of a complaints procedure that could be applied in respect of former Ministers on 7 November 2017. But by then, and if I am not mistaken, allegedly, people involved in the procedure had already interacted with the complainants. From the 7th November, a frantic rush to prepare and redact a final version of this procedure started.

John Smythe:
The first exchange I have seen between either of the two complainers in regards to sharing their experiences with someone in the SG is on 07 NOVEMBER 2017. This is actually listed in the Chronology of Events supplied by the SG to the Committee. This is misleading though as in the message Ms B is clearing responding to something Barbara Allison had said previously. That means that there had to have been at least one previous message between them. I suspect it/they were not included as it would show that Barbara Allison reached out to Ms B, someone no longer working in the SG, and not the other way around as the SG would like to suggest. Interestingly very few people ever seem to comment on the fact that Ms B is the one that recommended Ms A should speak to Barbara Allison in the first place. She did not do that though instead she eventually sought out John Somers, who she met twice on 20 & 21 NOVEMBER, whose line manager just happened to be Barbara Allison. She apparently met with both Barbara Allison and Gillian Russell the next day on 22 NOVEMBER 2017 in which a detailed note was taken of her experiences. The formal complaint of Ms A came in via email to Nicola Richards on 16 JANUARY 2018. The formal complaint of Ms B came in via email to Judith Mackinnon on 24 JANUARY 2018. This was BEFORE the Procedure had been uploaded. Only those who had worked on the brand new Procedure could have known about it before that time Also In regards to the 07 NOVEMBER 2017 James Hynd actually replies to Judith Mackinnon talking about the route map she had sent him following her meeting with Leslie Evans and asking if the pathway concerning former ministers was informed by legal advice. So clearly James Hynd, contrary to what the SG would like people to believe was not the one who came up with the former ministers aspect in the first place as he specifically references it in Judith’s route map. 

Mia:
Mr Sargent took on his own life on the 7th November 2017. the family released Mr Sargents’ lawyers letters on the 9th November 2017. If the civil servants involved in the botched complaints procedure against Mr Salmond had read those letters, they already would have known at that point that their complaints procedure in Scotland did not have a leg to stand on in a court of law, that it was unlawful and therefore could explain their continuous attempts at obfuscation later on and particularly at hiding information relative prior contact between the investigating officer and the two complainants, which led their furious counsel to encourage the SGov, in the strongest terms, to concede defeat.

How likely is that those involved in the procedure, the lord advocate, the copfs etc, knew already before the civil case even started that the procedure was unlawful on the basis of the letters sent by Mr Sargent’s lawyers? My suspicion is that very likely. Can it be credible at all that a competent head of the civil service was not aware of these letters and would not be seeking to protect the reputation of the civil service and from potential liability following a botched procedure of this calibre?

John Smythe:
They had to have known it was unlawful from the start. As I posted in my Phase 1 Index The SG guidance actually points out that it would not be fair to make anonymous complaints as the person who was accused would not be able to mount a proper defence against them. It was also discussed that nobody in a support role could be the investigating officer. For some reason that was ignored. I suspect it was because if a proper investigator had been assigned they would have found the complaints to be baseless. 

Mia:
There are many parallelisms between the way Welsh gov conducted their “investigation” against Mr Sargent and the way Sturgeon’s SNP with the collusion of the UK civil service conducted that of Mr Salmond. It is as if both investigations and botched complaints procedures had been taken from the exact same rushed script. Only that after the death of Mr Sargent, the civil servants in Scotland were in a frantic rush to cover their arses and redact a somewhat, believable procedure.

I recommend to read the letters from Mr Sargent’s lawyers (published in 9 November 2017 in the magazine Welsh Oline “Carl Sargeant’s family release solicitors’ letters and accuse Welsh Labour of not giving him the decency of defending himself.”)

Mr Sargent’s family accused the Wales’ FM his office of “clearly prejudicing what is allegedly an independent inquiry” 

The letters also warn Mr Sargeant feared “the evidence of the witnesses was being manipulated” by the interview with the complainants conducted by Mr Jones’ office, and his special advisor Matt Greenough, just as it happened with Mr Salmond’s.

Mr Sargent’s family decided to speak out “in light of the continued unwillingness to clarify the nature of the allegations made against Carl”. Just as it happened to Mr Salmond.

This is the full text of Mr Sargent’s family statement.

“The family wish the release into the public domain, correspondence between Carl’s solicitors and the Labour Party on Monday of this week (6 November 2017).

“Up to the point of his tragic death on Tuesday morning Carl was not informed of any of the detail of the allegations against him, despite requests and warnings regarding his mental welfare.

“The correspondence also discloses the solicitor’s concern that media appearances by the First Minister on Monday were prejudicing the inquiry. 

“The family wish to disclose the fact that Carl maintained his innocence and he categorically denied any wrongdoing. The distress of not being able to defend himself properly against these unspecified allegations meant he was not afforded common courtesy, decency or natural justice.”

In one of the letters, Mr Sargent’s lawyers writes:

“”It would seem that already a large number of people have spoken to the complainant or complainants yet we still have received no disclosure of the complainant or complaints.

“On Friday, the First Minister advised our client he could not provide details of the complaint or complainants other than that the FM special advisor had spoken to the complainant or complainants to verify the complaint.

“There appears to be a very real possibility that the evidence of the witnesses is being manipulated and numerous conversations with the witnesses by various members of the First Minister’s office at the very least must create uncertainties about the credibility of any evidence. We would ask that a full and complete log of contact with the witnesses be maintained that the details of the complainants be disclosed and the content of our letter addressed as a matter of urgency”.

Similarly to Mr Salmond’s case, while Mr Sargent’s name was plastered across the front pages, the names of the alleged accusers were not and were given anonymity even before it was ever proven if they were in fact telling the truth or not or even if they existed at all.

In another parallelism with Mr Salmond’s case, there were plenty of apparatchicks claiming these women were “victims”, when the victim in all this botched handling of the process was always Mr Sargent, who was never explained what he had been accused of nor given the opportunity to defend himself properly.

The Welsh first minister had announced an independent inquiry into how he handled Mr Sargent’s sacking. This was on the 10 November 2017. When did Nicola Sturgeon handed over to the Permanent Secretary full control over the complaints procedure?

Mr Sargent’s wife challenged the legality of inquiry, and expressed publicly her concerns that the investigation could become a “cover-up”, just as the Fabiani Farce became in the case of Mr Salmond.

Mrs Sargent high court action was launched to challenge “unlawful” decision-making in relation to the investigation’s operational protocol. The decisions in question include “the barring of the family’s lawyers from being able to question witnesses”, another “to allow the independent investigator to bar the family from hearings”, and also a move to “prevent oral evidence from being heard in public”.

In April 2020, Mr Sargent’s family agreed to settle so the planned QC-led investigation into the actions of First Minister Carwyn Jones before the death of Carl Sargeant was cancelled. Part of the agreement was that the Welsh gov had to foot the entire bill for the legal costs.

All very similar to the procedure in the case of Mr Salmond. The same “mistakes” were done. The Welsh former government was saved by a settlement out of court that stopped the investigation. The Scottish counterpart was saved by the Fabiani’s farce and the active suppression of information by the CoPFS. 

It is not credible that these two processes were taking place almost simultaneously in Scotland and Wales and that were almost a fotocopy of each other if this was only a Scottish matter.

In any case, in the same way there seems to be an unhealthy proximity between Sturgeon’s crew and the Uk civil service, there is also an unhealthy proximity between the way Sturgeon leads the party and the way labour is being run.

John Smythe:
From reading that there does seem to be some disturbing parallels between the two however I would need to look into that more. I will try to do so, Mia, when I have some free time. Thanks for drawing my attention to it.

Iain:
I hope there is a growing realisation that the questions and investigations into the disgusting fit up of Former First Minister Alex Salmond will never go away until the truth of the organised plot forces the people responsible to admit their guilt or are totally exposed as being responsible. Justice and truth must and will prevail.

John Smythe:
Agreed Iain. It is a pus filled plook on the face of Scotland that all the concealer in the world cannot hide. It won’t go away by itself over time either. It needs to be popped and soon.

MY COMMENTS

John is to be congratulated for the exhaustive research he has carried out on this matter. Painstaking review of all the documents involved was a mammoth task and then sorting into a timeframe to make sense of them was skilled work. John and others like him, Gordon Dangerfield in particular, have been invaluable to help people understand exactly what was going on and when and suggesting the likely, or in many cases, the certain motivations to act as they did.

I am, as always

Yours for Scotland

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