Rebekah Vardy said she would “love” to leak stories about Coleen Rooney to the media, according to messages disclosed at the high court.
The court filings suggest Vardy and her former agent Caroline Watt had an ongoing relationship with reporters at the Sun newspaper and discussed at length how to leak stories to the tabloid.
Vardy is suing Rooney for libel in the so-called “Wagatha Christie” case, over an allegation that Vardy was responsible for leaking a series of stories from Rooney’s private Instagram account to the Sun. Both women are married to footballers – respectively Leicester City’s Jamie Vardy and the Derby County manager, Wayne Rooney.
The filings also show that Vardy described Rooney as a “nasty bitch” and a “cunt” who “needs to get over herself” in private messages disclosed at a court hearing on Tuesday.
The court heard Vardy and Watt had discussed a post on Mrs Rooney’s private Instagram where her car had been damaged in January 2019. Vardy told Watt she “would love to leak those stories”.
Rooney ran a sting operation in 2019 by putting three fake stories on her Instagram account and slowly reducing which accounts could view the posts. When only Vardy could see the Instagram posts, alleges Rooney, and the fake stories kept appearing in the Sun, she went public with the claim. Vardy strongly denies the accusation and has run up a multimillion-pound legal bill bringing a libel case.
After one story from Rooney’s private Instagram appeared in the Sun, Rooney posted to her followers: “Someone on here is selling stories again to this scum of a paper. It’s sad to think someone who I have accepted to follow me is betraying [me] for either money or to keep a relationship with the press.”
Discussing this post, Watt allegedly acknowledged a role in providing information to the Sun, according to messages disclosed to the court: “Such a victim. Poor Coleen … And it wasn’t someone she trusted. It was me.”
The duo also raised concerns that Rooney increasingly suspected Vardy of leaking to the media and had unfollowed her on Instagram. Watt suggested that if any issues were raised they would claim that “one of the girls in the office has my old laptop that had your passwords saved on it, so it will have been them”.
At one point, according to the messages, Vardy says she has no idea how Rooney would ever know who was responsible for providing information “unless halls [Sun journalist Andy Halls] has leaked it”.
Vardy also complained that the Sun was not buying her photographs, telling Watt “we still need to make money” and suggesting they contact senior executives at the newspaper.
Some of the private messages relating to the case are missing, for a variety of unfortunate reasons. Vardy’s former agent said her mobile phone was accidentally dropped in the North Sea shortly after Rooney’s lawyers requested access to the device.
“Coincidentally, around the same time, all media files from Mrs Vardy’s WhatsApp conversation with Ms Watt also bizarrely disappeared (and from all backups), whilst apparently in the process of exporting it to her solicitors,” said Rooney’s lawyers.
Jamie Vardy, the Leicester City striker, also said that his “WhatsApp was hacked and all conversations were deleted and could not be restored”, while declining to allow Rooney’s lawyers to examine his phone. The laptop used by Vardy during the crucial period also “no longer functions”, while messages between Rebekah Vardy and Halls appear to have been deleted.
Rebekah Vardy’s own expert described the data recovery situation as “surprising” and “unusual”.
The disclosures suggests Vardy and Watt had repeated conversations about stories going to the Sun. At one point they discussed whether to provide the newspaper with a story about an England footballer who had a secret child as a result of an affair. A month later the Sun published a story with the headline “Married England ace has lovechild”.
Vardy has accepted that payments were made to her by the Sun in the run-up to Rooney’s accusation. Rooney’s lawyers are seeking disclosure of these payments.
When Rooney went public with the accusation that Vardy was leaking articles to the Sun, Vardy texted her agent: “That’s war.”
According to the messages disclosed at the court hearing, her agent replied: “You will have to say that you don’t speak to anyone about her but that recently your insta has even been following people you don’t follow … Just say you have allowed a company to access it for sponsored posts and a former social media agency that you worked with too.”
Rooney’s lawyers claim that “Vardy was a repeated leaker of private information to the Sun”. Vardy denies this and her lawyers say there is no evidence that she leaked the key stories at the centre of the case.
At the high court, they said the conversations between Vardy and Watt were evidence the duo were leaking messages from Instagram to the Sun: “It is clear from the disclosure that Ms Vardy knew what Ms Watt was doing. … She knew it was happening and the lack of any criticism that this was going on, let alone surprise, demonstrates that this was agreed.”
The libel case is due to go to trial later this year.
