Thread by @Tom___Scott

Look, Carrie Johnson was eminently suited to a £100k FO job. Here she is in 2012 with the Russian Ambassador at the launch of Conservative Friends of Russia, set up by the later CEO of Vote Leave with the help of Russian agent Sergey Nalobin.
#Carriegate
westcountryvoices.co.uk/tough-times-fo…

...at least, I'm pretty sure this is Carrie Johnson (then Symonds). Also pictured here is John Whittingdale MP, a founder member of Conservative Friends of Russia, whom she accompanied to this delightful event, where raffle prizes included a biography of Putin.
#Carriegate

Carrie Johnson & the Tory MPs at the launch of Conservative Friends of Russia must have known the nature of Putin's regime. Putin had already presided over massacres in Chechnya, invaded Georgia & ordered the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London with radioactive polonium.

.@RaveCozensHardy has alerted me to another photo that suggests I may have misidentified the woman next to Whittingdale in the photo. But Carrie Johnson was most certainly there, accompanying Whittingdale (later a leading figure in Vote Leave).

https://twitter.com/RaveCozensHardy/status/1538664795280375808?t=x2PF4ZxtRXeQHqxodzNTTg&s=19

What has become of Russian agent Sergey Nalobin since he set up Conservative Friends of Russia with Matthew Elliott (later CEO of Vote Leave)?

In April he was expelled from Estonia on grounds of national security.
newlinesmag.com/reportage/esto…

To be clear, the presence of Carrie Johnson at this event doesn't show she was actively involved with Russian intelligence. She was merely an eager young Tory surfing the tide of sleaze, mixing with others who were much more active participants. And look where that's taken her.

And here is Russian agent Sergey Nalobin in happier times, sharing a photo of himself with "our good friend" Boris Johnson. Small world.

The strange disappearance of the "job for Carrie" story echoes another press cover-up involving John Whittingdale, her companion at the Conservative Friends of Russia launch.

Friendly media barons can be very helpful.
#Carriegate (HT @PlusCaChange3)
opendemocracy.net/en/ourbeeb/rea…

Number 10 Intervened Before Carrie Johnson Job Story Pulled From The Times.

Former Number 10 adviser Dominic Cummings claims the story is accurate & "the truth is worse".

So what pressure was applied?
#carriejohnson #CarrieGate
politicshome.com/news/article/n…

Or, as so often with the Tory Party, was the suppression of the Carrie Johnson story more a matter of calling in favours granted?

A 'gentle reminder' of the very large sums of taxpayers' money handed to billionaire newspaper proprietors?
#Carriegate

https://twitter.com/BylineTimes/status/1538580615691481088

As I wrote recently for @WCountryVoices, the standard model of Tory misgovernment works like this.

In the case of media barons, the donations come more in the form of favourable coverage (or suppression of the truth).
#Carriegate #carriejohnson
westcountryvoices.co.uk/is-boris-johns…

Which takes us back to the beginning of this thread. Siphoning donations of Russian money into the Tory Party was what Russian agent Sergey Nalobin had in mind when he helped set up Conservative Friends of Russia.

He understood the Tory mindset very well.
theguardian.com/politics/2012/…