UK police examining allegations Washington Post publisher purposely deleted emails in phone hacking scandal

London police are looking into allegations that recently installed Washington Post publisher Will Lewis oversaw the intentional mass deletion of emails more than a decade ago while he was tasked with cleaning up a phone hacking scandal that roiled Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloids.

London police are looking into allegations that recently installed Washington Post publisher Will Lewis oversaw the intentional mass deletion of emails more than a decade ago while he was tasked with cleaning up a phone hacking scandal that roiled Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloids. In a piece published Wednesday in the Guardian, former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that he wrote to Metropolitan Police to look into what he believed was new evidence that Lewis was part of an attempt to conceal and destroy millions of emails while authorities were investigating Murdoch’s newspapers for using illegal methods, including hacking phones, for reporting. The Guardian said Brown wrote to police after documents that were recently made public during civil court proceedings reportedly showed Lewis met with detectives in 2011. According to The Guardian and Brown, Lewis acknowledged in the meeting that emails had been deleted because executives believed Brown and another member of parliament, Tom Watson, had a plan to obtain emails from Rebekah Brooks, then the head of Murdoch’s News International. According to the Guardian, Lewis told police that a source had warned them that a “current member of staff had got access to Rebekah’s emails,” and that that the whole operation was “controlled by Gordon Brown.” Brown called the allegations “a complete fabrication.” The allegations come as Lewis has faced serious ethical questions since taking the helm of The Washington Post after a lawsuit from Prince Harry and other high-profile figures revived claims that Lewis helped Murdoch cover up for senior executives in the scandal. After he was hired by the Post, Lewis also tried to kill a story about his alleged involvement in the phone hacking scandal coverup, offering an NPR reporter an interview in exchange for squashing the forthcoming article. Lewis has previously denied any wrongdoing and is not a defendant in the lawsuits. In May, Brown wrote to the Metropolitan Police and said he was told that the “Met’s special inquiry team” would look into it.