It was hardly a surprise that during his visit to the UK this week, Donald Trump told Keir Starmer to forcibly control the country’s borders.

“I told the prime minister I would stop it, and it doesn’t matter if you call out the military, it doesn’t matter what means you use,” he said.

It follows a pattern of erosion to the principles of freedom and democracy that began at the start of the 47th US president’s second term. 

Trump claims to champion free speech while trying to silence his critics, and he has no qualms with blatantly lying about things easily disproven by a simple Google search. This week alone, he claimed not to know the former British ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson –  just weeks after welcoming him into the Oval Office.

But when it comes to the military policing of the UK’s borders, who is Trump really talking to?

Look no further than the many thousands marching through central London last weekend for the “Unite the Kingdom” rally. Trump knows what he’s doing, and he’s already done it in his own country; he’s stoking the fires of division, egging on vocal bigotry that threatens to morph into something even nastier.

We’re ready to fight back. 

On Tuesday, I gathered the TBIJ team to plot out the investigative reporting that will be most effective in countering the rise of this hate. The ideas came flying thick and fast – I quickly had sheets of notes running across 13 pages. Of course, it wouldn’t be very wise for me to give all of the ideas away here, given the importance of keeping investigations classified until the painstaking work has been done.

But one issue we want to help tackle is the mis- and disinformation flooding the internet. As our friends at fact-checking organisation Full Fact have pointed out, some people at last weekend’s march claimed that police estimated 3 million people attended the event. The truth is that police said the number was between 100,000 and 150,000.

These numbers matter, and organisations like Full Fact and TBIJ have a duty to challenge narratives that skew the truth. We have a strong record of tracking influence operations, so this is something we’ll be digging into.

I’m encouraged by the fire burning in the team’s bellies – and if you’ve been following TBIJ for a while, you’ll know we rise to a challenge.

The work our reporters did last summer around the general election and the Southport riots was exceptional. They followed the money to prove that several political parties apparently don’t have a problem with accepting illegal foreign donations. They unmasked a network of Facebook bigotry run by Reform UK candidates and activists. And lifted the lid on the claim that Russian disinformation had fuelled the Southport protests.

Some of our staff know first-hand what being a target of hate is like. 

Yes, several, like me, aren’t from the UK. But if a white South African-American tech billionaire can galvanise a British crowd by telling them what should be happening in their country, then we know that it’s not really about nationality. It’s about skin colour and cultural background.

This week we started working on what will surely be the UK’s most urgent problem for some time to come. And the threat couldn’t be graver: as racial hostility around the country continues to rise, politicians are calling for the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. Join the dots – it’s scary.

If upholding our rights and countering the rise of hate is something you want to be a part of, please consider becoming a TBIJ Insider and supporting our work. Every pound goes a long way.

We’ve got a big advantage over organisations like the BBC, which is often accused of “both-siding” issues. We don’t have to do that. Yes, we’re fair and balanced. And our investigations are rigorously fact-checked. We won’t talk down to anyone. But that doesn’t mean we need to pull any punches. We’re happy to be brutally honest and direct. 

We’ll call things out – and we can move quickly.

Factchecked!

Each week we reveal a fascinating fact from our reporting…

Did you know?

China is a multibillion-dollar market for the NBA, with more basketball fans than the US has people.

Find out more

The league is beholden to Chinese interests and is also a huge platform for Chinese brands to advertise themselves to the world. Li-Ning and other Chinese brands like Anta and 361 Degrees now compete with legacy American companies for lucrative sponsorship deals. We revealed in August that all three brands are linked to forced labour in China.

Read more here.

Carter Ruck drops bid to hide identity of crypto scam client

Unlike other newsrooms, our work doesn’t stop once our stories have been published: we make sure our revelations reach the people that can turn them into action. And just this week, we won an important victory for open justice. 

Ahead of an upcoming disciplinary tribunal, the law firm Carter-Ruck was trying to keep secret the fact that it had worked for a multibillion-dollar fraud. Back in 2017, the firm represented the OneCoin crypto scam (whose founder Ruja Ignatova is still on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list) and even sent legal threats to one of its victims who was trying to warn others against investing.

We first exposed that threat – sent by Carter-Ruck lawyer Claire Gill – in a major 2023 investigation, and last month it was announced that Gill would be prosecuted for it. Ahead of her hearing, though, Carter-Ruck asked the court to keep OneCoin’s name out of it. Far better for the firm if the public doesn’t know it was working for international crooks. 

Along with a group of other non-profits, we opposed this, arguing that open justice must be upheld. And Carter-Ruck didn’t have much luck with the judge, who decided the anonymity wouldn’t be exactly appropriate given Carter-Ruck had likely been used to further the fraud. 

Carter-Ruck told us it accepted the decision and is confident that Gill’s conduct was in accordance with her professional obligations. It also made clear that the case against Gill doesn’t say that she or any colleagues knew OneCoin was a fraud.

It does, however, allege that she made an “improper” legal threat. That allegation is currently unproven and the hearing is yet to happen, so we’ll see how it shakes out. But for now, Carter-Ruck’s attempts to hide the truth have failed.

It’s a huge step for accountability.