Sacha Lord, advisor to Andy Burnham, withdrew his legal threat against The Manchester Mill after the publication stood by its story questioning a company's eligibility for a £400,000 Arts Council of England grant. Arts Council England is now investigating the claims against Lord, who denies the allegations and pledges full cooperation with the investigations.
After Sacha Lord dropped legal threat vs @ManchesterMill, @joshi told us: "I’m relieved because it’s been six days of wondering how this is going to turn out, how this is going to end. I’m proud of my team that their journalism got them over the line.” https://t.co/pC3GKhxAo4
Latest @ManchesterMill: Sacha Lord has withdrawn his legal threat - we speak to more former staff of Primary Events and further scrutinise claims made in the company's £400k grant application. W/ @molssimp @molly_muses & @Jacob_Hartley_ https://t.co/Mnyhu3GypT
🚨 Sacha Lord has just withdrawn his threat to sue us. He says he will "fully cooperate" with the Arts Council and GMCA investigations, and still denies the claims. We've held off publishing today's story for this statement. I'll let you decide (next tweet) how plausible it is. https://t.co/pzuhV616dP
🚨 We have some movement people: Arts Council England ARE now investigating the claims against Sacha Lord. For a week their stance has been that they checked the funding application and found no issues. After we sent new info last night, they are rightly looking at it again. https://t.co/pf2vJTMiQX
"The Mill is sticking by its story that questioned whether a company controlled by Sacha Lord was entitled to receive a £400,000 Arts Council of England grant." Thanks for covering this @MarpleLeaf and @BusinessDesk_NW, in the face of legal warnings. https://t.co/7KCBcetXSr
Andy Burnham's advisor Sacha Lord has threatened to sue The Manchester Mill - which is now asking for help from readers on a "community fact-check" in an attempt to further verify its reporting before a deadline given by lawyers of 4pm tomorrow https://t.co/ULksfjnbQE
The excellent @ManchesterMill has put out the bat signal for help fact checking a story on Sacha Lord, who is threatening to sue them. If you know anything about Lord’s businesses or lockdown support rules then check out this note & see if you can help https://t.co/HdJw281tFl