Allegations of predatory sex: David Walliams unmasked | The News Agents

A series of very young and in one case an underage girl, Jade, 15, she alleges that Walliams contacted her online, met her, initiated sexual touching at his home. She says after their first phone calls it started to get slightly dodgy, slightly quickly. You're in the bath, I'd love to see what you're like in the bath. The through line is that Walliams pursued these women. Of different ages, consistently, Ian Winter, the defence barrister, I think highlighted all that is wrong with the way rape trials are conducted and why so few women want to come forward. The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. Thank you. This is a global production. Really? Yes, seriously. Oh, girl, you look gorgeous. Really, honestly. I feel like the two gayest straight blokes there are, aren't you? Well, you must be a man. Isn't it a wonderful smoke screen? Isn't it, though? Isn't it glorious? It works wonderfully well. Thank you very much. That is convicted rapist Russell Brand on TV with David Walliams, who today has been outed as the mystery celebrity facing accusations of predatory behaviour and grooming Young girls. Walliams had tried to use an unprecedented argument that he would attempt to kill himself if the allegations were published. But he lost his case. And today, ITV and The Guardian published their investigations three years in the making. Welcome to The News Agents. The News Agents. It's John. It's Maitlis. It's Lewis. And we're going to get into the detail of what The Guardian and ITV have finally, as Emily was saying, after years and years of court battles, been allowed to publish. It's important to say at the very top that Mr. Williams denies all of the allegations against him. Nonetheless, these are the central. Claims that have been made. They concern a series of very young, and in one case, an underage girl. Jade, 15, she alleges that Walliams contacted her online, met her, initiated sexual touching at his home. She says he stopped when she pulled away, and then he suggested waiting until she turned 16. Alex. Alleged grooming followed by sex at the age of 17. She says their contact began when she was 15. She also considers herself groomed. The Guardian and ITV are also reporting persistent unwanted advances against several young women and girls. Lily Cratemore, who met him at 18, alleges he repeatedly pressured her to share his bed and pawed at her, despite her making clear she wanted only friendship. And then there are multiple allegations of workplace concerns, especially at his workplaces of Britain's Got Talent and Harper Collins, the investigation reports allegations he used his position repeatedly to pressure and pursue young women at both places, including a sexual relationship with a junior publishing employee. Obviously, at the centre of all of this and the heart of all of this is a question about the alleged abuse of celebrity power, which, as we say, at its most serious, includes an underage girl. So David Walliams has given a statement to The Guardian and ITV, and I think it's worth reading it in full. He says, looking back, I realised that at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I'd had casual relationships with. I realised I didn't always take people's feelings properly into account. That is something I regret. And whilst a power imbalance is inevitable when one party is famous, abusing that power... So that's the statement that he has issued. Yeah, and maybe we need a little bit of context for that, because one of the women, as Lewis says, was 15. She was an aspiring writer. She adored him for his comedy. She wanted to be able to write scripts for him. She was studying for her mock O-levels when she first met him. He was 32. This was back in 2004. And she explains the way in which she was groomed. These are her words. She says, I think I was groomed a hundred percent because she started to write to him to send him scripts. And I guess what You know, extraordinary peace of mind. She then recorded the conversations that they had. He responded to her first email, said, I don't really like the email. You know, can we talk on the phone? And she says after their first phone calls, it started to get. Slightly dodgy, slightly quickly. Oh, I'd love to see you. You're in the bath. I'd love to see what you're like in the bath. All that kind of stuff. Now, this is where it gets complicated because they did have, to William's point, consensual sex when she was 17 or 18 years old. So technically, he is right to say that that was not illegal. That does not count as statutory rape. But I think you have to put it in the context. Of that relationship that she had been led into for the previous two years in which she thought she was talking to her hero. She thought she was talking to somebody who was going to help launch her career in television, writing scripts, writing comedies. She was sending him her scripts to have a look at. And he was saying, keep up the good writing. Good luck with your exams. Good luck with your work. He knew how old she was. He knew what she wanted from this relationship. He was under no illusions that she was looking for a sexual relationship. relationship with a man who she aspired to work with and for and I think that's where this becomes really Obvious, actually, to the outsider. That is what predatory behaviour starts to look like. And it is possible that he did not know that he was being predatory. I mean, you know, we know that he's of a different sort of neurological make-up. I don't think she had to fight him off in a traditional way of sexual abuse. Although there are allegations of other women that that's what they had to do. And just on the legal side of this, because I think this is so interesting, Because, you know, look, with Russell Brand... There was an allegation of rape and a jury convicted him of it. The police need a victim to come forward for them to launch an investigation. And until such times, whether anonymously or not, whether one person or multiple, if there is nobody who's made a complaint about him to the police, then there is no police investigation. And obviously, look, you know, him having sex with somebody who was 17. ...is not illegal because that is above the legal age of consent. Grooming... is a criminal offence, if you can be found guilty of grooming young people. So there are kind of areas which are much greyer than, say, with Russell Brand, where women had gone to the police with specific allegations and the police acted upon those allegations. And I think you see this in the tenor of the stories, that the through line is that Walliams pursued these women of different ages. Consistently, and in some cases it's clear, ferociously. I mean, look at the case of Jade, the youngest of the now women involved. She's initially contacted by Walliams, a very, very famous person. This young girl who, again, wants to get into television and so on, just messages her out of the blue. In fact, initially she doesn't even reply because she thinks, why on earth would he want to reply to me? Her profile and her age is clearly stated on the profile. In another case, a young woman called Ella, who was a model. And he had got in touch, I think they'd met at some sort of event. He then got in touch with her agency, her agent, got the number from the agent. He starts to sort of pick up a conversation with her. He invites her to his house party, a house party that he's having in his home in Primrose Hill in North London. And again, you can see in the Guardian's reporting, what happened there is the night she's actually warned by the wives of one of the celebrities at the party. You're very young, you know. Do be careful. As the night wears on, the Guardian writes, Ella claims Walliams wanted more of her attention and invited her for a tour of the house. He led her upstairs. In his bedroom, she says, he invited her to take a look out of the window. And I remember feeling him come up really close behind me and the hairs going up on the back of my neck. I turned around and his hands were placed at either side of the window. And he's a big man. He's intimidating. He leans in for a kiss. And I just remember going, ugh, and ducking underneath his arm. Running away and then she recalls later in the evening sitting on a sofa when Walliams lying down, she claims, put his head in her lap, begged her to stay the night with him. She says she felt vulnerable. And now as a mother herself in her 30s, she feels that the way he contacted her and then pursued her at such a young age, I think she was, I think she was 20 at the time. Was an example of grooming and clearly inappropriate. And that's the thing. It's that persistence, even when it's clear that these young women don't necessarily know what they're doing or don't care to do the things that he's suggesting, that seems to be the through line for all this. I mean, you mentioned the fact that no woman in the Williams case has come forward to the police yet. This is an extraordinary moment for investigative journalism. I think we have to recognise that, whether it was Channel 4 and Dispatches and the Sunday Times bringing Brand to a nearly 11 year jail sentence, or whether it's now this incredible work, actually, of ITV and The Guardian who have had to fight. A law, an injunction, a high court injunction to even reveal this person's name because of everything we explained at the beginning. And it is possible that these women start by turning to journalists, actually start by by by coming to people who are willing to listen to the stories rather than to the types like, dare I say, Ian Winters, who thinks that he's the King's counsel who was in the case defending Russell Brand. Yeah, the barrister for Russell Brand, who essentially tried to throw the journalist under the bus. for even raising it in the first place. Yeah, honestly, I couldn't agree more. I mean, look, you know, we all kind of have had the taunts endlessly from Donald Trump about how we're fake news and the mainstream media and they no longer kind of can be trusted and all the rest of it. This is the result of unbelievably good journalism, where the journalism of the Sunday Times and Channel 4 has led to the prosecution and imprisonment of, you know, one of the... kind of main stars of the the noughties and beyond and Russell Brand is now in prison as a result of good great journalism this is also great journalism on the part of uh you know the the ITV and the Guardian I think the interesting thing is still which is uncomfortable is the extent to which Celebrities have got various mechanisms open to them. To suppress, to stop, to thwart, to throw sand in the gears to stop journalists doing their job and to try and seek injunctions, NDAs, non-disclosure agreements, or these other things called the slap orders, which we've spoken about at various times on this podcast, which is a strategic lawsuit against public participation. And it's a really vicious way of shutting someone down. All those things. are still out there and of course as you said Emily in the introduction to the pod you know David Walliams tried a legal mechanism to stop publication saying if this comes out I'll kill myself. Yeah well maybe the better advice is over Walliams is if these allegations are true you wouldn't be in this position if you hadn't. groom these young women and I think that this is, John, what you've just said, I think is completely right about the power between journalism and celebrities. But there's obviously, and that's often how it's framed, rightly. And look, we've fought our own super injunction on this show, again, in very different circumstances against the government about the Afghan data leak. So very different. But nonetheless, there's a third party. It's not just about the power of the press to publish what we want versus the celebrity. It's about the right of, in this case, women. To be able to tell their own stories. You know, this is about the most fundamental mismatch of power in the sense that we often talk about this as a contest, as I say, between a celebrity's privacy and a newspaper's freedom or a journalist's. Freedom. The third party are women whose accounts are silenced. Right. And the real difficult thing for me about this, and I think we really need a big conversation about the legal framework, about privacy in this country and about celebrity and powerful people's ability to use the law and the courts. To not just say what they want to say, but to prevent other people from being able to narrate and tell the truth about their own lives, right? And that is something that's quite peculiar to Britain. You know, most other countries, you mentioned the United States, John, you wouldn't get away with this in the US because they've got the First Amendment. Our libel laws, our laws around defamation, our laws around right to privacy are hopelessly out of date. And a right to privacy... It cannot automatically become a right to control somebody else's account of their own life. And OK, we got to the right outcome here. But only because the parties involved were willing to spend, it would have been millions of pounds over the years to get this case to court and eventually win. Most ordinary people do not have that luxury and do not have those resources. So we need to review this very urgently, I think. I think there is an asymmetry. Uh, in our law, which tends to be more concerned that a man would be wrongly accused than that a woman who is telling the truth could take her own life if she isn't able to talk about that. And, you know, the fact that the judge in this case just came out and said, I, I'm not a specialist in suicidal ideation. I'll leave that to the therapist. Thanks very much. I can only tell you whether this is, you know, It's lawproof, legal, and you cannot be trying to silence a truth coming out or an allegation coming out, let's say, because somebody might be about to take their own life. Because there are thousands of women, frankly, there may be millions of women who've been in that exact same position and have never been granted the chance to fight on that level. We gave a shout out to journalism and journalists for their role in this. I think it's worth giving a shout out to. to judges because the judge that you've just quoted Emily absolutely spot on and the judge in the trial of Russell Brand him making that point yesterday about you know just because of women dresses in a certain way or may have had a drink or two in a certain way when she says no it still means no and I thought that the way that the judge framed it was absolutely brilliant in the way the calm way in which he took everything into account and just Kind of peeled back the layers of this, of Brand's behaviour. And, you know, look, justice has been done. Some might say it's taken too long. Some might say, can we speed these things up? In the Brand's case. Yeah, in the Brand case. And it's still true. That, you know, allegations of rape, there are very few of them that actually come to court. And I know government and I know the legal profession is looking at this and trying ways of doing this. But as you were talking about Ian Winter, the defence barrister, I think highlighted all that is wrong with the way rape trials are conducted and why so few women want to come forward, given what sort of ordeal they're going to go through. They say a sort of momentary lapse with regard to consent in the Brand case. So, oh, you mean rape? You mean rape. I don't know if it's momentary or for an hour. I mean, that's rape. And I just think, John, but just on a judge point, I agree. We've seen, obviously, two judges who've done their job exemplary. Again, from my own different experience of super injunctions and so on, I think, and other people I've spoken to about this as well, the slight problem is it can be a bit of a roulette wheel. You know, you could get a bad judge. And it will always slightly depend on exactly who comes up and when. And that is why I think we need to look at the law. Parliament really needs to start taking this seriously. If the Labour government and the Labour Party is about ensuring that there is open justice and equal access to justice, and is concerned about mismatches of power among the population. That has to start with a legal framework about this stuff. It has changed. It has massively changed. I mean, the legislation that's coming through, we'll be hearing from Zelda Perkins in a moment, but actually the legislation has changed in this country. It is coming through now. NDAs to cover up criminal activity are no longer allowed. But I do want to, I mean, the question that we've been having, let's say, off-air, is the meme, really, which is, you know. Different times, right? Let me just put it out there, different times, because something that we've sort of skirted around a little bit in our own conversations are about whether things have genuinely changed. And whether the time when these things happened, right, if you go back to some of the allegations against David Walliams in 2004, I mean, I'm remembering back in 1999 when Gail Porter, the Breakfast TV star, woke up to find a 24-metre high image of her naked self on Big Ben, on the House of Parliament. I mean, this was a time when kind of the lad culture was considered fair game. You know, it was how much you could drink. It was how much you could shag. It was, you know, how crazy your stag do's were. That was the culture at the time. You know, we had very reputable comedians making jokes about paedophilia and 15-year-olds the whole time. Well, I mean, let's just say, I mean, there was, I mean, you know. There was an example at a Comedy Awards night where, this is not Walliams saying it, it was the host saying, the Comedy Awards is 15 years old, 15 years old, and like most 15 year olds, it's drunk, it's unpredictable, and it's probably going home with David Walliams. That was in 2004. No, everyone laughed. Everyone laughed. Everyone laughed. And of course, in the Russell Brand case, what did the Sun newspaper call him year after year? Shagger of the Year. In fact, they discontinued the award because they said no one could ever shag this much again. So we kind of, everyone knew, right? That's my question. Everyone knew. Are we more, are we better at this? Are we more prurient? Or are we just getting, are we being helped now because women are feeling more able to talk about it? I mean, that's the question. Have times actually changed? Well, I think that's such a fascinating question, because if you, you know, you go to the noughties and then I think there was a backlash against the noughties and then along come. The Tate brothers and toxic masculinity and, you know, men are being feminized by these overbearing women who tell us what we can and can't do. And we've got to fight back. You get Donald Trump getting elected in 2016. Nevertheless, having been found, released a tape of him saying you can grab women by the pussy and he still gets elected president. And then so it goes again. And now you feel it's coming back again. And there was the Me Too movement, you know, that came a year or two later. in America and now we're seeing some kind of you know comeuppance here in the UK with you know Russell Brand being sent to prison for 10 and a half years. I would say this is obviously highly anecdotal what I'm about to say um but I was very struck by it this morning I mean I think that I think sometimes like when we're talking about this at a relatively like elite media level sometimes like we sort of miss just what actually in terms of attitude in the country attitudes in in the country just... Just how that regressive element that you just identified, John, how pervasive it can be. I mean, I just happened to be somewhere this morning and I was talking, I was just mentioned just in passing with the person I was with, the brand stuff. And this guy who was walking past, who's a young guy, just answered me and goes, well, they've done him up, haven't they? I said, I'm sorry. He said, well, they've done him up. There was no evidence. It was all hearsay. I say. Wasn't hearsay. There was loads and loads of evidence. You weren't in the court. I wasn't in the court. Don't you think we ought to start by believing these traumatized women? Just shrugged his shoulders, moved on. I happened to look because I remember that episode we did three years ago with Rosamund. Um, uh, but we, When she first broke the story. Yeah, when she first broke the story at the Sunday Times. I noticed that YouTube were promoting it. Yesterday, or over the course of the weekend, because obviously with the brand story coming up, I just happened to click on it, and I just looked at some of the most recent comments. And of course, you look below the line, do we pay much attention to these things? But it is interesting. I mean, all of the top comments are, this is absolutely a miscarriage of justice. Did he enjoy the benefits of women loosely throwing their bottles at him? Was there any evidence against him? No. Why did so many women find him attractive and throw themselves at him? Why didn't these people come forward at the trial? And on and on it goes. I think it is disturbing, actually, and I hope it is a minority. I'm sure it is a minority of opinion. But I think the message has to go loud and clear about this stuff, that these sort of views are simply not acceptable. Well, joining us now is Zelda Perkins. Many of you will know Zelda as the former assistant at Miramax to Harvey Weinstein. Zelda Perkins encountered Harvey Weinstein trying to rape her colleague, and she went to tell Miramax, who then turned around and essentially silenced. Zelda. She was forced to sign an NDA in 1998 and it took decades, took until 2017, when she broke that NDA to tell her story to me on Newsnight. She has campaigned tirelessly to try and free women from the bind of the NDA, of the silencing of victims. And I'm really interested, Zelda, to ask you about. William's response to this, which we've just had. He wrote, I realise I did not always take people's feelings properly into account. That is something I regret. Whilst a power imbalance is inevitable when one party is famous, abusing that power is something else entirely. It's something that I never did. I'm not a sexual predator. I've not broken the law. And I guess this is where we have to sort of pull apart what we know about this case, that the women he was having sex with were legally... of age and yet have described his behaviour to them as deeply predatory. Yes. I mean, it is very difficult where you draw a line between personal and private behaviour and legal and illegal behaviour. And I think the only way you can look at it is through a sort of moral and ethical lens. And if you are in a position of power and you are somebody who has a high public profile, you should be held to very high standards. I think the problem is that we live in a society where we have a... Issue with sycophancy to fame and power. And this means that people who have high profile and who are in positions of power can act with impunity because those around them don't pull the plug when they should. And I'm not taking the blame away from Williams, but I do think that there is a real issue still systemically with how people in positions of power, whether it's a CEO, whether it's a manager at McDonald's or whether it's a media personality like Williams. are dealt with by those around them and those more vulnerable are protected or not protected. So there is it to take false comfort or kind of be misleading yourself to think that something has changed? To think that given that we saw yesterday Russell Brand being sentenced to 10 and a half years in prison, given today ITV and The Guardian have been able to publish their report into David Walliams, That maybe there is some accountability. No, I think there's been a huge amount of change. An absolutely enormous amount of change. This would not have happened eight years ago. And And I think the problem with the Me Too moniker is that everybody has been saying Me Too is dead. Me Too is not dead, but you can't suddenly have the breaking of silence that happened in 2017 translating straight away. And what's been happening since 2017 is hundreds, if you look back over the last eight years and you look at the amount of people that women have felt able to speak up about, and this is, I'm afraid, the tip of the iceberg, but it doesn't mean that the environment immediately changed and it was easy to do this. It is still nigh impossible to speak up about people in power. without there being terrible, terrible repercussions. And particularly if you're relying on your wage and you need to pay your mortgage, etc, etc, etc. Taking on people in power is hard and you still have to go through a legal process. What's changed is the legal level of risk now. The risk equation has totally changed. The law sector has made really big leaps and bounds. And I think what's... What's been so interesting with the Russell Brand case is that Russell Brand's KC actually was a gift. He was a gift to us because he showed in laser focus the old attitude. And why that is problematic. And that will have made everybody sit up and really see. And the fact that he had to report him. Just to explain, when you're talking about the QC, Ian Winter, who told one of the journalists, Rosamund Irwin, that he said, I hope you got what you wanted. Yes. It's not just that. What he did was he used all the old rape tropes, myths, in that case. Put those women on trial. Asked them why they had not kicked. Why they had not kicked him out of bed, why they had not screamed, why they had gone back to his house. I mean, in a way that was almost unbelievable. And I think this was a huge error of Brand's strategy because they chose a lawyer to try and throw the case out a little like Weinstein by saying that he wasn't going to get a fair trial. So they didn't get a sexual misconduct lawyer. And I'm afraid Ian Winter didn't know what he was doing when it came to trying these women. And he absolutely highlighted what the problem is in court. And what he's done actually is brilliantly show those in the public who have not yet really understood the rape myth idea and why being put on the stand as a woman is so awful and so uncomfortable and why women don't want to come forward. He's laid it on a plate for us. He then came out of the courtroom and put the court in disrepute. By swearing, Rosamund Irwin, who was one of the brilliant journalists who investigated the brand story, and said to her, I hope you're pleased with yourself. And she said, I'm pleased that justice is being served. And he said, well, you've effed it. Suggesting that that whole process, that that jury was wrong, that that whole legal process was wrong. And that's a pretty terrible thing to do as a KC. But it made it transparent. It made it very transparent. And he's referred himself now. To the Bar Council over his, because he hasn't admitted to any misbehaviour, but he said there have been a lot of reporting about my behaviour, so I'm going to rise above it. He has to report himself, really, because it was all done in the public environment and it's recorded what he said. And, you know, Ros Irwin would have reported him to the Bar if he had not reported himself. And you've spoken about how... Much change has already taken place. I mean, do you think this will be a catalyst? Ian Winter, KC, will end up being a further catalyst for change in the way rape trials and witnesses are dealt with? It's part of the journey, and I hate to use the term journey. But as I said, Me Too or, you know, this people feeling able to speak up and challenge the old patriarchal kind of system. It's consistently going on. Every single man and woman and child, I'm afraid, who speaks up about what's happened to them, you know, is a catalyst. Some are more high profile than others. I have to say that the legal sector has been very good at moving forward. But... There are still individuals who are practising like dinosaurs, as we saw with Ian Winter, and there are a lot of barristers and solicitors who have really taken on the changes and who are really going to be forced to take on the changes now that the Employment Rights Act is upping the protections around it. employees and I think that's something that's also going to be very key when we look at media cases because as you know most people in the media are freelance and currently they do not have the protection that other workers have and this is something that is being looked at in the Employment Rights Act and should be changed rapidly because the majority of the people who've come forward certainly about Russell Brand will have been freelance workers. A lot of women come to you, Zelda, if they've been silenced, if they've been forced to sign NDAs. You know of others who have been forced, silenced. For their abuse by Russell Brand, is that right? Yes, I have several women who are being held under NDAs who will never be able to speak about what's happened to them. Why not? Because it's not a criminal offence what's happened to them. They could make the choice to speak, but there comes a lot of jeopardy with speaking and breaking an NDA. There wouldn't be any legal repercussions, I believe. I think the atmosphere has now so changed, the environment has now so changed, That people who choose to break their NDAs are unlikely to have any legal repercussions. However, it's not even really the legal repercussions you need to take into account as somebody coming forward breaking an NDA. It is your public exposure. And speaking as somebody who entered the public domain rather blindly, because I didn't think about it or feel I had any choice, once you have done that, you can't row back. Once your name is online, once you have spoken about what's happened to you, it is there forever. And every single... Crank, legal commentator, journalist, anybody who wants to can comment on you, on your decisions, can contact you, can reach you. And it's a very unpleasant place to be. And if you have buried some awful experience... You go world famous overnight, essentially. That you have, yes. Sorry, yeah, Zelda, I just want to understand something that you've just said. You said that, you know, to Emily's question, that there are a number of women who are under NDAs now. Are those NDAs that were taken out by Russell Brand or those NDAs that were taken out by media companies? And so surely the media companies, it's incumbent upon them to release anyone from an NDA in the case of someone who's now a convicted rapist. There are managers and execs and companies who will be feeling quite nervous at the moment. And my suggestion to them would be to dissolve these NDAs. To release people. Yeah. Because it is in their power to do so. It is in their power to do so. But if the victim does not want to be identified, that's where there's sometimes a bit of a rub. Because the victim may not want to be identified. So I would suggest that it was something that was done privately and that the victim had the option to negotiate that their identity was protected. But if they wanted to speak to their family, their friends, they wanted to be able to explain certain of their own behaviours or in a new job or go to a therapist, they would be able to do that. Zelda, you said a moment ago a lot has changed in the last decade or two decades. David Walliams doesn't need us to defend him. But it is interesting that at the time when he was... Having, as he would say, consensual sex with 17, 18-year-olds. I think there was one who was 15 who he also engaged in sexual activities with. Jonathan Ross, and I'm sure he's not alone, was making jokes on the stage about a 15-year-old award. And when you're 15, you know, you get drunk and you go home with David Walliams. In other words, within the kind of culture of that time. That was seen as okay. It was okay to make jokes on a stage. It was okay to laugh if you were wearing black tie and sitting in the audience. It was okay. And so I guess my question is like, is there a world in which Walliams genuinely did not believe that he was doing wrong in your mind? I think that comes down more to a psychological profile. Everybody knows in their heart what is right or wrong ethically and morally. They also know that they can get away with certain things when they're in a position of power. And that is our responsibility. That is the responsibility of the people around people in power. And in the past, they were the enablers. And that's very clear when we look again at Brand. You know, he had people literally going and taking girls out of the front row that he had pointed to that he liked the look of. And I'm not putting blame on those people. Because that was how the system worked. And that has changed. That has changed enormously now. But certainly, I think, you know, and I think I said this to you earlier. If you look at characters like Brand or Weinstein, who are very clearly narcissistic sociopaths or psychopaths. And I have no fear in diagnosing them as that. They are clearly that. And I can tell you. They do not think that they have done anything wrong. Weinstein still 100% believes that he has done nothing wrong, as does Brand. One other thing. You have fought against the power of these NDAs, but we still have NDAs. There are these things called slap orders, which I think have come up in the context of allegations that someone has made, because Jemima Goldsmith has come out and said something today, and there was a member of staff. You know, who had a slap order put on them. It still seems there, and we know that David Walliams, lawyer, tried to argue that if this If this publication took place, he would take his own life. So there still seem to be a number of legal mechanisms open to people who are accused of wrongdoing to shield themselves from publicity. There are, and there is a place for privacy. Of course there is a place for privacy. What there isn't is a place for those tools of privacy to be abused. And actually, the last government and the current government... are making huge strides and changing and I would say particularly where we are now Thank not just with the Employment Rights Act but with I'm going to start with The Victims and Courts and the Victims and Prisoners Bill, which sounds like it's got nothing to do with this, you but is the only piece of legislation that has now come in, which means that if you are witness or victim to a crime, very no agreement can stop you from speaking about what's happened much. to anybody, including the media. Now, the Conservatives brought it in that you could make a protected disclosure to the police, to lawyers, etc. And we're talking about a criminal act here. So you could still be held under an NDA. If you took it to court, it would have been thrown out. But you have to have the money, the wherewithal, the knowledge to take it to court. But now, if you have witnessed... ...or suffered a criminal act, no confidentiality clause can keep you quiet. That's hugely important. And then you put that together with the Employment Rights Act, which is going to stop non-disclosure agreements around harassment and discrimination, then you really are beginning to break this environment of silence. Slaps are the next. Slap orders are the next thing. And that's actually something that you as journalists will be very aware of. Lots of, you know, they have been used against journalists to shut you down because you go after the individual rather than the organisation. And they really are the evil cousin of NDAs. And, you know, this is also going through Parliament at the moment. But there needs to be more light shone on that because that will be where people pivot to who have got money. You mentioned Ian Winter. I think it's probably fair that we also give a shout out to Justice Ben Nathan, who was the judge yesterday, as you were called, who said it doesn't matter what women wear, it doesn't matter what they drink. If they are saying no, they're allowed to say no. It doesn't even matter if you've had sex with that person before. You know, a sort of GQ man of the year moment, right, where he did get it. I wonder whether you think that was a rebuke to Ian Winter or whether he has basically reset the parameters now. for how women feel able to complain about sexual abuse. He's reset the parameters because it was done publicly. And I mean, when I heard him say that, it really did give me goosebumps. There will be other judges who have said similar things, but it won't have been reported. This is a massive permission. And it shouldn't have to be a permission, but this is a massive permission and acceptance of women's rights. And I think, you know, this is fantastic. And again, I'm not, I'm not... diminishing or being flippant about the seriousness and the difficulty and the awful experience that these women have gone through. And speaking up is not fun. And going on the stand, I cannot imagine. I have never had to do that. And the bravery of those women is beyond because they will receive trolling. They will get shouted at on the street. This won't end now for them, I'm afraid. This will continue and it will be negative and positive. Seeing this case, and it being so publicly reported, and it being handled so badly by Ian Winter, the KC, actually is a gift, as I said earlier, because these are the things that really illustrate the arguments that all of us who speak up, who are trying to change legislation, who are trying to change public opinion, these are the moments that that really make. the huge changes because legislation you know guidance regulation it's fine you can change all of that but unless culture changes nothing changes and these things have to change together and actually getting the public environment to change is the hardest so yes moments like these completely change the entire environment that we live in. And that is really, really a very exciting thing to see. Zelda Perkins, thank you so much. Before we go, some more news from Washington. One of the themes of next year when the new Democratic Congress takes office undoubtedly will be to what extent they try and pursue corruption and wrongdoing via impeachment with their new powers. It's striking that this has already begun, but not from a Democratic congressman or senator, but in fact a Republican one. The Republican congressman is planning to force a vote in the House of Representatives this week to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, alleging he has violated the Constitution by engaging in the Iran war for more than 90 days without congressional authorization. This is from Representative Thomas Massie, who's been something of a thorn in Donald Trump's side. Here is Hegseth addressing that suggestion this morning. Let's be clear about what this resolution actually does. It tells our enemies, Iran, the cartels, every adversary watching that the United States will actually punish its own warriors and its own civilian leadership for successfully executing lawful military operations. It tells them that a single rogue legislator loaded with personal animus for the president can attempt to veto national security decisions made by the duly elected commander in chief. It puts a target on the backs of American warriors by signaling that Congress will undermine their missions in real time. This is not patriotism. This is sabotage. Frat Boy Pete loves to call himself a warrior. He wears it well. And just to explain the urgency that has happened, we have seen the election and the results it will produce, but those seats won't be taken up until January. And so this period is the last time that those who want to try and impeach whilst they still hold their seats can do so. Now, Thomas Massie, as you said, Kentucky congressman, he has been very vocal on the releasing of the Epstein files. He made an enemy of Donald Trump. to the point where Trump then primaried him, basically got him out of his Kentucky seat. So this is Massie's last hurrah, if you like, to say, I'm going after Pete Hegseth whilst I can. And Pete Hegseth's response, which is, I was just doing my job, has led Massey to say, yeah, it's not that you're not good at war. We get that you're not, you know, you're fine at war, but actually... I am accusing you or these impeachment papers are accusing you of high crimes and misdemeanors. The talk is probably that Trump will have to just get rid of Hegseth. The easiest thing for him to do will be to relieve him of an impeachment process by getting rid of him sometime in January or February. But if you're trying to work out why this is all happening now, it's because people who are on the verge of leaving Congress maybe forever are trying to do this. Before they go. Well, Donald Trump has posted on Truth Social. He said, Pete Hegseth gets an A+++. For war. The A++++. For his defence against a disgruntled, angry, defeated former congressman Thomas Massie. A total loser. A total loser again in block capitals. And look. I would have thought that Donald Trump would have got rid of Hegseth, and that was an obvious move to make. You know, you get rid of the people that are a burden to you. The lightning rods. The lightning rods, in the way that, you know, he's brought in kind of Stephen Miller to be the enforcer and the tough guy in charge of the White House. You'd have thought that Hegseth would be vulnerable, but it looks like Donald Trump is doubling down. Although, interestingly, I thought it was, you know... He's doubling up and down. Up and down. Well, you know, 10 days ago, we were talking about intensification of the war against Iran, the possibility that he might use nuclear weapons. And now Donald Trump is coming out and saying, oh, no, it's all fine. I think we're OK. I don't think it's, I think it's very unlikely. I don't understand it. Pete's so likeable. Why do you think he has so many enemies on Capitol Hill? It's weird, isn't it? Such a generous character. I mean, he's only been accused of war crimes. I mean, you know, and he's Secretary of War. I mean, technically, I think Pete Hegseth is in the right here because as the Secretary of War... I never thought you'd say that. Well, he doesn't get to choose when you go to war. I mean, the Commander-in-Chief is the Commander-in-Chief. That is Trump. Trump orders the war in Iran. He follows orders with his generals. He was chief cheerleader for that war. He was. He was the enforcer. He was the carry-out. Yeah, yeah. It cost them. I'd be very surprised if this gets to impeachment. I think Pete will be out the door by January. It doesn't verge to, I mean, obviously this is the Republican bit, as you say, Emily. I mean, it does remind us of a dilemma that the Dems are going to have with the new Congress, right? Which is real, which is... You've got all of these new powers now. You've got the power to subpoena, to investigate, even to impeach. Maybe not convict, but certainly to impeach. Who do you choose? What do you go after? Because I think there is a feeling that, you know, with the judicial processes against Trump in the Biden years, which obviously the Dems weren't entirely in control of to some extent, there is an element of overreach, that there were too many indictments, that there were too many things. And how do you balance that dilemma between, on the one hand, wanting to not give Trump that sense of persecution and witch hunt all over again, on which he absolutely thrives, and focus on domestic priorities and signal that to the American people for 28, because after all, Trump's not going to be there then. But then on the other hand, you've got all these powers and they are the most corrupt, corrupt administration in history. And what is the point of you being there if you don't at least have some targets that you're going to investigate? There will be a difference of opinion across different parts of the Congress, but I think it is a dilemma they're going to have to face next year. Just before we go, let me remind you that you could pose questions on subjects like this to News Agents Plus, our weekly Q&A that we'll be doing, as well as an additional history episode, and we'll also be giving you a newsletter. The old agents. The old agents. What, a newsletter? Well, no, no, the history episodes. Oh, right, exactly. We're doing old news. People love old news, famously. And you can find out all about all of this on News Agents Plus. Do subscribe. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye-bye. Bye for now. Goodbye. The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. This has been a global production.