John Bye Profile picture
Sep 18, 2022 21 tweets 10 min read Read on X
Francis Hoar, lawyer to the cranks, has an unenviable record of losing almost every case he's involved in. But with clients billed up to £400 an hour for his services, he and his fellow lawyers seem to be profiting from crowdfunding for cases that are often futile and unwinnable.
It started in April 2020, when Francis Hoar wrote an article saying lockdown was "disproportionate" and could be in breach of the Human Rights Act.

The article prompted Simon Dolan to launch a legal challenge against lockdown, and Francis Hoar became junior counsel on the case.
Side note: showing what a small world it is, Francis Hoar's article included a "thanks" to Dr Robert Craig for "comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of the article".

As well as being a lecturer on constitutional law, Robert is the brother of .. HART co-founder Clare Craig!
Dolan's campaign raised a staggering £427k in crowdfunding plus £65k in corporate donations.

But after dragging on for a year, losing at every stage, the case ended up costing £560k in legal fees plus £120k defence costs.

Leaving Dolan out of pocket, but his lawyers well paid.
In April 2021, Francis Hoar represented a man in a case against mask rules at his daughter's school. A few weeks later a judge refused to issue an injunction, on the basis that the girl wasn't actually required to wear a mask. 🤦‍♂️

£48k was crowdfunded for this pointless case.
Francis Hoar's case relied heavily on "witness statements" from HART members Zenobia Storah and Simone Plaut.

In his ruling, the judge commented that "it is clear .. the views expressed do not represent universal scientific and medical views". Which is putting it mildly.
Amusingly, thanks to #HARTleaks, we also now know that Francis Hoar was still asking HART for "papers on masks for a submission to court" .. on the morning he filed his final written submissions for the case to the court!

Talk about leaving your homework to the last minute.
In August 2021, Francis Hoar was one of the lawyers arguing for a judicial review of vaccine mandates for care home workers.

Law or Fiction raised £68k in crowdfunding for the case.

A judge refused their application. They appealed. The second judge also ruled against them.
Also in August 2021, Francis Hoar started work on the Covid 19 Assembly's case calling for a judicial review to stop 12-15 year olds being able to get vaccinated against covid.

Hoar is a member of the Covid 19 Assembly's advisory board, alongside HART's Clare Craig.
Fronted by Bev Turner, the case crowdfunded £113k and dragged on for almost a year, losing at every stage.

Eventually they gave up after their appeal was dismissed by a judge who said they had "no realistic prospect of success". They ended up paying over £100k in defence costs.
It's no surprise they lost, as Hoar and his not-so-learned friends had relied on witness statements from unemployed pathologist Clare Craig and American crank Peter McCullough for evidence.

They also cited Tess Lawrie, the UKMFA, and Michael Yeadon's Doctors 4 Covid Ethics. 🤦‍♂️
In September 2021, Francis Hoar became involved in the bizarre case of Sam White.

White had posted a wild "resignation" video in June, saying he was quitting his job as an NHS GP because of covid "lies". He then complained when the NHS stopped him doing locum work for them. 🙄
But having crowdfunded £155k for the case, Hoar's only work for Sam White seems to have been overturning a GMC ban on him posting covid disinformation on social media.

White took full advantage of this ruling, and is now an advisor to anti-vax group Children's Health Defense. 🤦‍♂️
This is the only covid case I've seen that Francis Hoar actually won, with the judge ruling the GMC's decision was "wrong from a purely procedural perspective", while saying nothing about White's "whistleblowing" claims, which were all just nonsense he'd read on the internet.
As a result, the GMC paid White's legal fees, which were at least £25k.

So what happened to the £155k crowdfunding? Updates are vague, but suggest it was used for other cases, including Mark Sexton's ludicrous "crime report" against the vaccine programme, which White is part of.
Since then Mark Sexton has issued fake arrest warrants for prominent politicians and public figures, and incited his followers to "use force as necessary" to "arrest" them.

How do @CrowdJustice feel about their platform possibly funding this campaign?

In January 2022, Francis Hoar may also have been involved in Together's campaign against vaccine mandates for NHS staff.

The case crowdfunded £68k but never went to court, as mandates were withdrawn in March.

Hoar is now one of Together's directors and owns 20% of the company.
Despite never seeing court, the lawyers claim to have only had "just over" £10k left from the £68k (minus the website's fees) that they raised for the case on Crowd Justice.

Again, they funneled that left over money into yet another case, against vaccinating children...
Which brings us to May 2022, when Francis Hoar represented HART spin-off the Children's Covid Vaccine Advisory Council in a last minute call for a judicial review of vaccinating 5-11 year olds.

Another £51k was raised for this case, on top of the £10k left from Together's case.
The case ended in July, when a judge dismissed their request for a judicial review as "totally without merit".

Unsurprising, as Hoar's "expert witness" was retired paediatrician and HART, UsForThem and CCVAC member Ros Jones.

Ros admitted she wasn't an expert. The judge agreed.
Since April 2020 Francis Hoar has worked on cases that blew £1,000,000 in donations and sometimes cost his clients even more money on top of that, representing a tangled network of interlinked groups, some of which he's also a member of.

But at least the lawyers got rich.

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More from @_johnbye

Jun 6
The BMJ has had to issue a statement after everyone from The Telegraph and former Brexit Minister David Davis to anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists claimed that covid vaccines may be responsible for excess deaths, based on a dubious study published in @BMJPublicHealth. 🧵



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The Telegraph's @sarahknapton has a history of this. Two years ago she tried to blame excess deaths (including some covid deaths!) on lockdowns, with a clickbait headline that the article (behind a paywall) failed to support. This is more of the same.

As for the BMJ article that inspired all of this, it simply takes excess death data from 47 "western" countries (ranging from the US and UK to Australia and New Zealand to Bulgaria and Moldova), adds them all up, then engages in a lot of vague arm waving.

bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/2/1/e0…
Read 7 tweets
Jun 1
Geneva is crank central this weekend, as multiple events target the WHO's annual World Health Assembly. Including a "convoy" of 3 cars, a lawyers' press conference featuring sovereign citizens and 9/11 "truthers", and a host of speakers that may outnumber their audience. 🧵


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I first came across the "Road to Geneva" protest convoy when Dan Astin-Gregory (HART / Pandemic Podcast / "Free Humanity") promoted it at an Andrew Bridgen rally outside Parliament in April.

The whole thing seems to have been rather last minute and shambolic though.


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Unsurprisingly the British leg of the "Road to Geneva" hasn't got much traction. Photos show a "convoy" of 3 vehicles (including Dan's van), while a Telegram post claims about 50 people made it to Geneva for fondue. There's very little chatter in other countries' channels either.


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Read 39 tweets
Apr 19
Andrew Bridgen and his supporters held a rally outside Parliament yesterday, after his speech in the House of Commons blaming covid vaccines for excess deaths. The rally saw calls for executions, a speech by Piers Corbyn, and banners claiming vaccines killed 17 million people! 🧵 Image
Andrew Bridgen modestly suggested that his speech in Parliament (attended by a handful of MPs) "will be totemic, it will go around the world".

He also falsely claimed that covid vaccines are "damaging everyone's immune system .. and making us more prone to cancer". Image
Piers Corbyn also spoke at Bridgen's rally after the debate, but seems to have used it to promote his run for London Mayor, which (unsurprisingly, given his constant begging for petrol money) fell at the first hurdle after an apparent mix up over his deposit. 🤦‍♂️ Image
Read 6 tweets
Mar 28
Andrew Bridgen has been ordered to pay Matt Hancock £44,300 in defence costs, after his libel claim against the former Health Secretary was ruled "defective" earlier this month, and needing amendments before the case could proceed. 🧵

independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/…
While Andrew Bridgen initially tried to claim victory, because the judge didn't throw out his libel claim completely, he's apparently failed to amend his complaint since then.

The latest ruling against him warns that if he doesn't do so soon, the whole case will be dismissed. Image
Andrew Bridgen raised over £100,000 for his libel claim, via a crowdfunding site owned by his former colleagues at Reclaim. Oddly he's still failed to declare most of this money in the Parliamentary Register of Interests.

He's now begging for more .. to pay Hancock's lawyers. 🤦‍♂️ Image
Read 7 tweets
Mar 27
Of all the "doctors" @Nigel_Farage and @GBNEWS could have invited on to talk about the NHS, they picked Ahmad Malik, a self-proclaimed anti-vaxxer who claims 9/11 was a "false flag" attack and covid was a hoax, calls the NHS a cult, and isn't even licensed to practise anymore. 🧵

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Former foot surgeon Ahmad Malik hasn't worked for the NHS since 2017, and gave up his license to practise medicine completely last month. These days he works as a full time podcaster.

Perhaps unsurprising, given his stance on not just covid vaccines but ALL vaccines.


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Like many, Ahmad Malik first fell down the rabbit hole of 9/11 conspiracy theories. He claims it was a false flag and commemorated the atrocity's anniversary last year by interviewing 9/11 "truther" Richard Gage, and spamming tributes to 9/11 victims with ads for his podcast. 😬


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Read 5 tweets
Mar 5
Andrew Bridgen has shared a letter he recently sent to the Metropolitan Police, accusing the government of murder over the covid vaccine programme! He's calling for police to meet some of the most extreme conspiracy theorists in the UK. Here's who they all are...🧵 Image
The list of "experts" Andrew Bridgen wants police to meet is a who's who of the British covid conspiracy movement, many of whom he's been working with for years. This latest move seems to be supporting a long running campaign by a man who has called for public hangings! 😬 Image
Michael Yeadon claims covid vaccines are "toxic by design" and part of a plot to wipe out most of the Earth's population. He also thinks the Spanish Flu pandemic didn't happen, and everything from nuclear weapons to moon landings were faked. 😳


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Read 25 tweets

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