Eight or nine years ago, Dan Wootton was seen as just another creepy entertainment reporter and gossip columnist in the British tabloid media. He worked his way up from the News of the World, to a brief stint at the Mail, to the Sun’s entertainment gossip column, to breaking some big royal stories – especially in the 2018-19 time frame. Eventually, Wootton was pushed out of the Sun (or did he jump?) and he moved back to the Daily Mail. The Mail gave him a column where he spreads bile, disparages the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, rage-shrieks about all things “woke,” and writes love letters to Prince William. He’s still employed by the Mail, but he also has a side gig as a presenter/commentator on GB News too. He talks about royals, politics and more. For years, there’s been gossip about how Wootton gets certain scoops and just how sleazy he is behind-the-scenes. Well, that gossip has started to go mainstream, following a few viral Twitter-threads. Now Byline Times has put everything together to paint a portrait of Wootton as a serial blackmailer and catfisher.

GB News presenter and MailOnline columnist Dan Wootton hid behind fake online identities to trick and bribe scores of men into revealing compromising sexual material, Byline Times can reveal in the first part of a three-year special investigation. The 40-year-old broadcaster and self-styled voice against ‘woke’ culture – whose show Dan Wootton Tonight is the biggest ratings winner on the UK’s fourth-most watched news channel – targeted journalistic colleagues, friends and members of the public for at least 10 years.

Byline Times has extensive evidence to show that, between June 2008 and 2018, Wootton – who is gay – posed as a fictitious showbusiness agent called “Martin Branning” to offer sums of up to £30,000 “tax free” to his targets, many of whom were heterosexual men.

Among them are a very senior executive at Rupert Murdoch’s News UK alongside at least six other staff at The Sun newspaper – one with close links to News UK CEO Rebekah Brooks – friends, Facebook associates and users of the dating apps Grindr and Gaydar. Two of the targets made criminal complaints to Scotland Yard without knowing the real identity of their tormentor with detectives aware of the activities of Branning – whose name is a portmanteau of EastEnders characters Martin Fowler and Max Branning – since 2019.

Our journalists handed a 28-page dossier of evidence to the Metropolitan Police for investigation on 20 June 2023, however last week criminal claims started to emerge on social media, with the posts rapidly attracting more than 18 million views, causing Wootton to trend on Twitter for several days.

As a result, this newspaper is today publishing some details of our findings. We have identified five co-conspirators, along with a representative group of around a dozen victims. However sources suggest the true figure extends to many, many more men. Byline Times knows the names of those involved but, in order to protect the victims and the course of justice, it will not be revealing them publicly.

During the established period of his activities, Wootton was initially an influential editor for Murdoch’s News of the World before moving, once that paper closed in 2011 after the phone-hacking scandal, to the Daily Mail and then, from 2013, to Britain’s biggest-selling tabloid The Sun, at which he edited its ‘Bizarre’ showbiz column before becoming an associate editor.

Tonight, a representative for Dan Wootton declined to provide Byline Times with an on-the-record response. It is understood that he strongly denies all allegations of criminality. The representative did not clarify, when asked, whether Wootton also denies being Martin Branning.

[From Byline Times]

Byline gave anonymity to some of Wootton’s alleged victims and allowed them to tell their stories, which were all variations on the same theme – random solicitations of money for nude photos, always using the same pseudonym of Martin Branning. “Branning” would solicit photos and videos night and day, text after text, all from an untraceable phone. These victims who spoke to Byline were, by and large, Wootton’s male, heterosexual colleagues at the time of the harassment and solicitation. One victim was catfished by Dan using the profile of a “Maria Joseph,” and that scheme was actually somewhat successful, in that the victim did end up sending photos before he realized Wootton was behind it. Byline also confirms that they gave their dossier on Wootton to the Metropolitan Police.

Byline also summarizes the accusations made by Wootton’s former boyfriend Alex Truby, whose Twitter thread about Wootton went viral last week. Truby put together the “Martin Branning” thing as well, and Truby was also Wootton’s victim – Wootton was tracking Truby’s email and social media and he made Wootton sound emotionally abusive and deeply unstable.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, GB News screencap.