It has been three weeks since allegations against the outspoken broadcaster Dan Wootton emerged.
Since then, he has continued to present his regular show on GB News while the publishers of the Sun and MailOnline have begun separate investigations, and an MP has asked questions about inquiries into the conduct of the rightwing polemicist.
A central allegation is that Wootton was using a pseudonym, Martin Branning.
Someone who called themselves Martin Branning has been accused of allegedly offering Wootton’s former Sun colleagues thousands of pounds in return for explicit material.
Now a new witness has come forward to claim “Martin Branning” and Dan Wootton were one and the same man.
Andy Lee, a performer on the subscriber website OnlyFans, told the Guardian he met “Branning” in person back in 2013 – and later realised he had actually met Wootton.
Wootton has neither confirmed nor denied that he used the Martin Branning pseudonym and an associated email address, but he has claimed he is being smeared by a malicious former partner and “dark forces” intent on ending his career.
Lee now alleges Wootton used the pseudonym Martin Branning to arrange a sexual encounter with him 10 years ago. The encounter, Lee claimed, came after he had responded to a Craigslist advert seeking male models.
In emails that have been seen by the Guardian, Branning describes himself as a “relatively high-profile” 30-year-old who lives in a flat in the Aldgate area of London.
At the time, New Zealand-born Wootton was a senior showbusiness journalist at the Sun who had just turned 30 and, the Guardian understands, was living in a flat in Aldgate.
Lee said he met Branning, whom he recalls as having a New Zealand accent, as planned. At first Lee did not think there was anything odd about the encounter. “I was always under the impression he was Martin Branning,” Lee said.
This apparently changed soon afterwards, when Lee claims he was followed on Twitter by a journalist called Dan Wootton. Lee said he was shocked because the profile picture on Wootton’s account was the face of the “Martin Branning” he met.
Three weeks ago, Wootton’s former boyfriend publicly alleged Wootton was behind the Branning email account, while Byline Times has reported similar claims by an anonymous former colleague.
Former Sun employees have told the Guardian they were approached over several years by someone calling themselves Branning who offered them large sums of money in return for sexual images.
The claims relating to whether Wootton inappropriately offered colleagues money in return for sexual material are being investigated by Wootton’s employers at MailOnline, where he has a now-suspended column, and his former employers at Rupert Murdoch’s News UK. The Sun’s editor, Victoria Newton, was questioned about its investigation when she responded to a letter from the culture select committee of MPs last month.
Wootton has disputed many of the allegations as defamatory and is raising money to support a legal claim against Byline Times.
Lee said he decided to contact the Guardian because Wootton appeared to be failing to engage with the allegations.
He claimed: “I don’t know the whole story. I just want you to know that he is Martin Branning – and I’m the proof of it. Whatever he was doing around it, he was Martin Branning.”
He said he thought Wootton’s failure to provide full explanations had a whiff of hypocrisy, given he had made his name intruding into the personal lives of celebrities.
When the Guardian approached Wootton for comment, the GB News presenter’s lawyer said his client “has no recollection whatsoever of ever meeting” Lee.
The lawyer did not engage with questions about whether Wootton had ever used the “Martin Branning” email address or gone by that pseudonym, or whether Wootton had accessed the Martin Branning email account used to make financial offers to Sun journalists.
Wootton’s lawyer said the questions were part of a widespread conspiracy against the GB News presenter, adding: “For the avoidance of further doubt, our client did not at any time contact current or former colleagues at the Sun with offers of money in return for sexually explicit images, he did not engage in inappropriate behaviour in the workplace.”
Wootton has continued to present his nightly GB News show since the allegations were first made. News UK, the Sun’s parent company, has called in external lawyers from Kingsley Napley to investigate the claims against its former star employee.
The journalist’s lucrative twice-weekly column at MailOnline has not appeared since his former boyfriend went public with the allegations. The company confirmed on Thursday that Wootton’s freelance contract had been suspended pending further investigation.
Wootton responded to the allegations on his GB News show, saying “dark forces” were trying to bring him down. He said he accepted making unspecified mistakes in the past but denied any criminal wrongdoing and has since claimed he is being unfairly targeted for having “political views that challenge the orthodoxy”.
He said: “These past few days I have been the target of a smear campaign by nefarious players with an axe to grind. I, like all fallible human beings, have made errors of judgment in the past. But the criminal allegations being made against me are simply untrue.
“I would like nothing more than to address those spurious claims. I could actually spend the next two hours doing so, but on the advice of my lawyers I cannot comment further.”
GB News has declined to comment and referred to Wootton’s on-air statements.
Wootton’s big break in UK journalism came when he joined the News of the World as a showbusiness journalist in 2009, working there until the tabloid was shut down amid the phone-hacking scandal. He later joined the Sun, ultimately taking control of its celebrity-focused Bizarre column in 2014 and appearing as a correspondent on ITV’s morning show Lorraine.
After stepping down from those roles, he increasingly focused on royal stories, breaking the news that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would be moving to the US. Wootton left the Sun in early 2021, joining GB News ahead of its launch and signing up to write his column for MailOnline.
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