The former Mirror journalist whose testimony will painful to watch for Piers Morgan will be before Leveson on Wednesday morning. The day after Morgan.

In July Hipwell spoke out of his time at Morgan’s Mirror:

“I used to see it going on around me all the time when I worked at the Daily Mirror. I sat right next to the show business desk and there were some show biz reporters who did it as a matter of course, as a basic part of their working day. One of their bosses would wander up and instruct a reporter to `trawl the usual suspects’, which meant going through the voice messages of celebrities and celebrity PR agents. For everyone to pretend that this is some isolated activity found only at the News of the World is ridiculous, it’s just a lie.”

Said Showbiz Editor was one Mr. Richard Wallace who is also expected to give evidence this week. He is now the Mirror’s editor…

See also: Ex-Mirror Journalist Puts Morgan’s Denial in Doubt and Mirror Journo Speaks Out Against Morgan’s Version of Events

UPDATE: Sky’s digital-guru Neal Mann scooped Guido by about eight seconds. He’s pretty grumpy about this.

It’s now been confirmed that Piers Morgan will be before Leveson’s show trial next week. Some weekend reading for Mr Jay:

The former Mirror and News of the World editor will be under oath. First question: “How do you explain how you came to be listening to Sir Paul McCartney’s voicemails?”

Just one day into the Leveson Show Trials and it’s already up to thirty “rogue reporters” at News International. And there’s a few more years to go yet...

Surprise surprise, it didn’t take very long for the obvious to filter through: Glenn Mulcaire hacked on behalf of the Mirror…

Back in July, Trinity Mirror Group brought in City lawyers Herbert Smith “to help it in its dealings with the judge-led inquiry”. Guido has to wonder what this “help” really means and whether we will see some Harbottle & Lewis/ News International style “dealings”. Whether we will get a whitewash remains to be seen, but Mirror Group’s actions thus far don’t exactly inspire confidence. Either way their work load must be on the increase, especially given that the Mirror Group have already had the finger pointed at them…

Further to Mark Kleinman’s whitewash scoop this morning, Sky News have been running this package, which will not make for comfortable viewing for Trinity Mirror execs:

In other news, it’s the first day of the Leveson Inquiry today.  Surely just a coincidence…

See also: Beckham Hacking: Mirror Cover-Up (Part I)

Trinity Mirror are set to announce that their review into phone-hacking has found that there was no widespread malpractice taking place at its newspapers, despite a growing list of allegations around Ulrika Jonsson, Frank Bruno and Noel Edmonds. An internal investigation whitewash? Sound familiar yet? 

Sky’s Mark Kleinman is reporting that:

“Paul Vickers, the group legal director of Trinity Mirror, told a meeting of the company’s board last month that a review lasting about six weeks had been completed and that there were no grounds for directors’ concern.”

This is despite clear allegations from a former member of staff at The People that, Kleinman reports, were not considered by Vickers. We know full well that the legal director had been made aware of the allegations in this letter from the Sunlight Centre. Add this to the fact the same former staff claim the Mirror Group’s HR department “urged colleagues to deny any knowledge of phone-hacking at the company on the same day that Clive Goodman was arrested in 2006.” Plenty here for the Guardian to really get their teeth into…

In an effort to be helpful, Guido has today written to the Mirror Group’s Legal Director, Paul Vickers, who is conducting an internal investigation into allegations of Mirror Group hacking and blagging. So far Vickers has discovered nothing, not a single bit of wrongdoing. Mirror Group CEO Sly Bailey will be so disappointed. Maybe this will help him:

How much hush-money did the Mirror Group pay David Brown to buy his silence about widespread hacking of celebrities and politicians done from within the Mirror’s newsroom? Tom Watson and the DCMS Select Committee don’t seem very interested in hacking when it was done by Mirror journalists under Piers Morgan. Perhaps Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry will take a harder look…

UPDATE: Trinity Media’s press office confirm that David Brown left the business on April 5, 2006. So it would be more precise to say in the above letter that the settlement, rather than the sacking, was in 2007. The Press Gazette covered the story and the threat of an imminent industrial tribunal immediately after the sacking.

Interesting to note that it’s the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal that is firing the latest shots across the Mirror Group’s bow. There is no doubt that the target of their story this morning was the former Screws editor Colin Myler, who not only questioned the Murdoch’s version of events, but conveniently edited the Sunday Mirror between 1998 and 2001. The paper hardly comes out of the story well though. The WSJ reports:

“In 2000, a reporter for the Sunday Mirror testified under oath that he paid £50, or about $82, to a police source in exchange for a tip about the arrest of the brother of a government minister, according to two lawyers for the plaintiff.”

The brother of Baroness Tessa Blackstone sued the Sunday Mirror over the alleged content of that tip, a case which the paper subsequently lost in 2000. They had to pay out £50,000 in damages and another quarter of a million in costs. That’s a pretty expensive bribe. Trinity Mirror Group continue to deny accusations of criminality, despite the confession of bribing cops being on oath…

As speculation matures into full-blown witness statements and accusations, Trinity Mirror have called in the law firm Herbert Smith and launched an investigation into phone-hacking across its titles. Until now there have been only present tense denials of such actions.

One shareholder told the FT they expected “nothing less” than an investigation, but it hasn’t come in time to stop the company’s share price going into free fall, with a 9.8% plummet on Monday since Guido, swiftly followed by the BBC, and grudgingly some other papers, began lifting the lid. He’s not sure a mere review is going to do much to reassure investors…

Those of you following Guido on Twitter will know that for weeks Guido has been using the hashtag #CircularFiringSquad to drip out names of journalists from other newspaper groups, in particular the Mirror group, who are as guilty as those arrested at the News of the World. Illegal hacking and blagging, with no public interest defence, has been endemic at Mirror titles. Last night on BBC Newsnight they produced testimony from former employees that at the Sunday Mirror

• they hired a voiceover artist to imitate celebrities to blag information
• they “saw Liz Hurley’s phone being hacked and a reporter listen to her mobile phone messages”
• Ex-Sunday Mirror journalist Richard Watson confirmed hacking took place “pretty much every day”

Last week this blog reported on the record accusations against Tina Weaver, editor of the Sunday Mirror, that she was at the heart of a culture of journalistic illegality. Max Keiser claimed that she personally told him in 2002 about Piers Morgan’s working knowledge of phone hacking – at a time when he was editor of the Daily Mirror. Guido has extensively reported allegations against Piers Morgan dating back to his time at the Daily Mirror which have been followed up worldwide. We have reported testimony that when Mark Thomas was editor of the Sunday People, he was according to Guido’s source – who is a household name, “the biggest phone hacking enthusiast”. The evidence of the Information Commissioner against the Mirror group is compelling.

If it turns out that Sly Bailey’s Mirror group was a criminal enterprise, they will have to face the consequences, with a market capitalisation of only £140 million and damages that could mount up to tens of millions the consequence could be bankruptcy. Plus jail time…

Meantime, and until the due process of the law takes its slow course, Guido thinks it beyond credibility that Tina Weaver is a member of the self-regulatory Press Complaints Commission. Tina should step down.

On a personal note, if Mirror group newspapers “go after“ Louise Mensch MP, as they are openly threatening to do, they will be making a big mistake. She sits on the DCMS Select Committee and is determined to widen their inquiries out to other newspapers beyond the News of the World. Tina and Sly should remember that it was a similar threat by Rebekah Brooks against Tom Watson that eventually led to News International being brought to crisis point. Louise is just as tough as Tom…