On his blog, posted late on Saturday night, Andrew Bolt accuses me of “a despicable defamation of [his] wife”, and of “laughable errors, from my supposed previous ‘engagement’ to the apparent assumption that some clearly fake Twitter account was actually mine …” (“The Bolt Factor”, October). He also accuses me of “the shameless smearing of his late mother” and “the pathetic sledging of my wife by an unnamed ex-girlfriend of mine from more than a quarter of a century ago”.

In response:

• I have accepted the assurances of his wife Sally Morrell that although she worked as a moderator of her husband’s blog, she did not moderate the posts that were offensive to David Marr and Annabel Crabb. I apologise to her for any distress caused by this report. I note that Andrew Bolt has disclosed that he “did much of the moderating on those days” and “I almost certainly let those through myself.”
• I have a statutory declaration from the woman who was engaged to marry Andrew Bolt in the early 1980s in which she discloses details of their relationship. I have acceded to her request not to disclose her identity.
• I am totally aware of the difference between @AndrewBolt, which is a fake Twitter account, and @AndrewBoltsBlog, which tweets links to his blog every time there is a new item posted there. If Bolt himself does not tweet these links, then someone from his place of employment must do so; who else would benefit from these postings? There is nothing “fake” about them.
• I challenge him to describe how his mother is smeared. All I say about her is taken from her own immigration application form, which includes the assessment of the Australian interviewing officer that neither she, nor her husband, had been involved in “political delinquency” during the occupation of The Netherlands from 1940–45.
• The comments of the “ex-girlfriend” are about Andrew, not about his wife.

Anne Summers

10 October 2011