High-ranking officials and close confidants of Nicola Sturgeon shared dozens of messages about the former first minister in a social media group chat, calling themselves the “Vietnam” group.
In one text message, two senior members of staff discussed the need to apply pressure on one of the alleged victims who was expressing reluctance about proceeding with her allegations.
Kenny MacAskill joined others in calling for Scotland’s Crown Office to release the unpublished text messages as written proof. He said: The “Vietnam” group included SNP staffers and members of government, and there has been a great deal of cross talk in SNP circles about the App and text messages and the Crown (office) is aware of it. He continued: the “Vietnam” moniker stemmed from “Operation Diem”, the name of the police investigation. Someone apparently misunderstood Diem to be a reference to a former president of Vietnam.
Peter Murrell, the SNP’s chief executive, husband of Ms Sturgeon and a member of the “chat group”, sent two messages to another member, Susan Ruddick, chief operating officer of the Scottish National Party on the day after Alex’s first criminal court appearance in January 2019.
Message 1: “Totally agree folk should be asking the police questions… report now with the PF on charges, which leaves police twiddling their thumbs. So good time to be pressuring them. Would be good to know Met is king at events in London.”
Message 2: “TBH the more fronts he is having to firefight on the better for all complainers. So CPS action would be a good thing.” (Refers to getting the CPS in London involved).
Murrell addressed the messages in a written submission to the harassment inquiry, stating: “The messages have been presented in a way that suggests a meaning that they do not in reality have. I intended to advise that there were questions that should be addressed to the Police and not the SNP”. Under oath, at the “Parliamentary Inquiry” he was asked if there were any more text messages to any other party official on the same subject. He replied: “No. Not that I’m aware of.”
On the Andrew Marr programme, Sturgon was asked if it was true there were no other text messages of “that nature”. She replied: “There are no messages that are relevant to this committee.”
Her reply implied the existence of other messages, but she had decided that none were relevant to the inquiry. Hardly reassuring.
Conclusion: Events since the foregoing reveal that habitual liar Murrell’s assertions that his motives for pressuring Ruddock were entirely honourable ring hollow. As do the utterances of Sturgeon
Readers may be aware that Ruddick contemporaneously made backdated allegations against Alec Salmond that are NOT covered by any anonynimity order and exist as a matter of public record and can still be read on the internet.
The independent witness who was the only other person there at the time says categorically that the incident of alleged physical intimidation did not happen.
Thus Rudick can not be taken to be an unilvolved or impartial person.
Quite the opposite, a fair minded person would justly infer.
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I willing to bet the “Vietnam” group is still active.
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