Yesterday @arron_banks & @andy_wigmore of LeaveEU bullied & threatened us ahead of this story we publish today about how they bully & threaten MPs & journalists. theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/j…
As @johnsweeneyroar of BBC Newsnight prepared a report on @arron_banks mystery £££ & how he funded Brexit, the leaders of the LeaveEU campaign agreed to hire a private investigator to dig up ‘personal stuff’ about @iankatz1000, the programme’s editor 
How low can you go? Lower. Here’s @arron_banks being told that his campaign against the ‘traitor’ MPs last autumn might be ‘too menacing post-Jo Cox’. And here’s Arron telling the LeaveEU employee to do it anyway.
That was *after* they’d already put out social media messages like these...calling MPs who threatened to vote against EU bill a ‘cancer’ & ‘traitors’. @Anna_Soubry had already received multiple death threats. @arron_banks knew this
And here’s how they tried to intimidate MPs during the parliamentary hearing. They went to answer qs about their finances & relationship with the Kremlin, instead they tried to smear the people questioning them. Here’s @IanCLucas calling them what they are: bullies
How do you defend fact you lied about relationship to the Russian government & cannot prove source of Brexit ££&? Lash out. Here’s @Arron_banks having a pop at committee chair @DamianCollins...& MP & MEP @BenPBradshaw & @guyverhofstadt with spurious (& anti-Semitic) link to Soros
Last week, we published evidence of @andywigmore passing FBI docs to the Kremlin. We showed how they co-ordinated their social media messaging with the Russian government - including threats against MPs & journalists. This was their reponse to latest set of qs.
Is this threatening & intimidating? Yes. For all of us - Observer editor @paulfwebster, fellow reporter @peterjukes, lawyer Zoe Norden. It’s nasty. It’s a Trumpian strategy of deliberately spreading lies coupled with personal attacks & it makes publishing this stuff hard.
This is not how a functioning democracy works. I don’t care if you voted Leave or Remain. This is a nasty, authoritarian attack on our institutions, our press, rule of law. That Brexit has legitimised.And after 18 months investigation, I can tell you this: that vote is a cesspool
THANK YOU, everyone, who's shown support. It's been so important. And this is why it matters. Threats & intimidation work. No news organisation in Britain followed up our reports from last weekend. The BBC stands silent. The bullies are winning.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/j…
theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/j…
