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Barrister accused of being behind Twitter account that harassed antisemitism campaigners resigns
Daniel Bennett admitted being in breach of the code of conduct at the high-profile Doughty Street Chambers
August 20, 2019 09:11
Daniel Bennett admitted being in breach of the code of conduct at the high-profile Doughty Street Chambers
August 20, 2019 09:11A barrister who was accused of being behind a Twitter account that harassed people who spoke out about Jew-hate has resigned from his chambers after he admitted breaching its code of conduct.
Daniel Bennett claimed he was no longer “involved” with the pro-Jeremy Corbyn @arrytuttle Twitter account, when he was confronted about it in July.
But fellow Doughty Street Chambers barrister Adam Wagner - a regular target of the account - submitted a formal complaint about Mr Bennett to the high-profile chambers, where lawyers include Amal Clooney.
Writing on Twitter, Mr Wagner said Mr Bennett sent a "fulsome apology, saying every tweet was unacceptable" after the complaint was submitted.
Mr Wagner said that while the account was deleted a month ago he had managed to preserve evidence of tweets about him in which the @arrytuttle said he was “thick as pigsh*t” and “accused me of lying, of fraud, and of being a ‘propagandist.’”
Mr Wagner said he was also accused of “’being an antisemite, an absolute danger, a hater of leftist Jews, of being hired to ‘get Corbyn.’”
He said: “These are only some of the tweets. The accusations that I am an ‘outlier’ and a ‘lying propagandist’ hired to ‘get Corbyn’ can be interpreted as antisemitic tropes.”
The account waged a campaign of anonymous abuse and harassment against those involved in the Labour antisemitism issue, before it was suddenly deleted when another Twitter account @TwelveScouts revealed the similarities between @arrytuttle and Mr Bennett.
Mr Wagner said he was “shocked” to find out that Mr Bennett was connected to the @arrytuttle, account “because he is a fellow barrister and a member of my chambers - and Jewish.”
After it was revealed that Mr Bennett was involved with @arrytuttle, Mr Bennett told Mr Wagner and the JC that “many people run that account and I have not been involved in it for years”.
Mr Wagner said that Mr Bennett “later told me that he was part of a group which was behind the account, that he continued to access it to look at the feed and the mentions but tweeted rarely.
"He saw some of the tweets about me and did nothing as he thought at the time I ‘deserved’ them.”
Mr Wagner said Mr Bennett had not distinguished which tweets he sent from the @arrytuttle account and has not told him who the “others” involved in the account are.
Mr Wagner said he was disappointed that speaking out about antisemitism had led to people sending him abuse and harassment online.
“I take no issue with people disagreeing with me politically or legally but this is something different: personal/professional abuse and harassment from an anonymous account which held itself as being run by a barrister," he added.
On a personal level this has been an extremely distressing experience. I get a lot of this kind of abuse from anonymous accounts but to find out this was happening in my workplace is something else. /15
— Adam Wagner (@AdamWagner1) August 20, 2019
"On a personal level this has been an extremely distressing experience. I get a lot of this kind of abuse from anonymous accounts but to find out this was happening in my workplace is something else.”
He said we would be working with the anti-online harassment NGO Glitch UK and hoped “to work with them to try and do something constructive with this involving Doughty Street.”
After Mr Bennet’s involvement in the account was discovered, a high-profile lawyer was instructed to pursue claims against him for the accounts harassment of people outspoken about Jew-hate on the platform.
Mark Lewis, who came to prominence representing the victims of phone hacking, is to pursue a claim against Mr Bennett, on behalf of a number of individuals from the Jewish community.
Mr Bennett has been approached for comment.
