Blair, Wendi and the email trail

 

The controversy over Tony Blair’s friendship with Wendi Deng intensified last night as new evidence emerged of the closeness between them.

The Mail on Sunday can disclose that a cache of emails to and from Ms Deng and the former Prime Minister was discovered when her ex-husband Rupert Murdoch filed for divorce.

The note reportedly states: ‘Katherine (sic) Rimmer does not like me because she does not want Tony gets (sic) in trouble with me.’

Further details of lovestruck Ms Deng’s note, in which she praised Mr Blair’s ‘good body’, his ‘really, really good legs’ and even his ‘butt’ were revealed by US magazine Vanity Fair last week.

 

 First, Mr Murdoch’s staff reported their concerns after seeing Mr Blair seek out Ms Deng in her bedroom in April 2012.

 Their worries reached Mr Murdoch, who asked them what they had seen.

The next day Ms Deng and Mr Blair flew together from Carmel to Los Angeles for a dinner hosted by Mr Murdoch to raise money for Mr Blair’s foundation.

When Mr Murdoch found out about it later, he is said to have regarded it as ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’.

Crucially, when Ms Deng and Mr Blair spent another weekend in Carmel in October, 2012, she had told her husband she was meeting a girlfriend.

 

But the girlfriend left early and let it slip when she bumped into friends of Mr Murdoch.

Mr Blair arrived next day.

 To make matters worse, Mr Murdoch was at a family gathering, attending to his dying 103-year-old mother.

The following week he spoke to Mr Blair, who reportedly omitted to say he had met with Ms Deng at Carmel.