How Long Did The Restorationist Tolerate the Depravity of Michael Reiners?
A Restorationist writer published her own story dealing with my co-editor. One of many which are emerging with similar details. After a vicious pre-emptive smear campaign portraying myself and others as suffering a "psychopathic episode," we forwarded what we found to the police.
He's talking about rape, i don't know what to do. I'll never forget those words. I knew who it was, but i couldn't believe it had now spread to the R. It was the fourth woman who'd contacted me about unwanted messages.
Three days before, Michael and I had an argumentative joint call phone call with a young British firebrand in New York who was keen to put us in touch with a well-known British libertarian ex-politician now based in the US. Michael was grotesquely drunk in the early hours of the morning, yet again. Afterwards, i threatened to hang up three times because he would not stop telling me, in lurid detail, how he forced his girlfriend's legs apart and raped her.
He wasn't confessing. He was boasting.
I had wrangled a planned exit: quietly terminate any relationship with Michael in the first week of November; let him promote the Great Repeal work on the agreement it would be publicised as the end of a planned 6-month experiment together. We started working together in May, and by early August i knew he had a serious alcoholism problem and something else wasn't right. By September, i knew something was very wrong. And this month, it was a matter of whether the police needed to be called. All of this when i am on the other side of the world to Albion.
What had emerged was a Jekyll/Hyde figure, exhibiting all the characteristics of psychopathy. Jekyll was a smooth-talking lawyer on YouTube with a fraudulent Middle Temple accent. We were meeting Hyde sporadically, but he had a total lack of any remorse, gloated about raping women, was obsessed with extreme pornography, and was gleeful in how he got away with it. Moreover, he was extremely ruthless and hungry.
I had no idea how obsessive and malicious he'd become.
Meeting Mr Jekyll
A few things always struck me as strange about my "co-editor," Michael Reiners. First, he didn't know much about law, as i expected, and he wasn't particularly good at it. When you meet a barrister, they invariably have a certain manner or affect about them which is wooden and tedious; overly-formal and patronising – which he lacked. Second, he always seemed to wear the same ill-fitting pin-striped suit and unironed white shirt which looked like they would smell bad, and on particular video calls he appeared as if he'd been sleeping on a park bench. Third, he was extremely cagey about his age. Fourth, he obsessed over his belief he was ugly, when he's an average-looking chap. Fifth, despite supposedly being a pupil of David Starkey, Starkey seemed to avoid him. But mostly, it was strange how the people who met Reiners weren't interested in following up any further.
Quickly, out of nowhere, i was thrust without my consent into a Twitter group chat without my knowledge. Looking back, it exemplified the "grooming" attitude: consent was not required. I saw this over and over: hundreds of people added into revolving private group chats when they never asked for it. One of them was, unbelievably, Fraser Nelson – of all people.
Things had started to take a severe downward fall in August, a month after we'd soft-launched the Restorationist and achieved some modest success: 40,000 visitors a month; glowing praise for articles; small media appearances. It was all my work, but i added Michael onto articles to help him publicise "our" work. We had an unspoken agreement he could promote my work at the Restorationist, which hadn't been formalised because i simply wasn't sure.
I like to write with two good friends of mine who have known me in real life under my real name for years. There are two other one-off writers i have known since i was in my twenties who also go under pseudonym. We use Slack because it's professional. All of us work in tech, and many of use our first and middle names for our single-member LLCs as is fairly typical in the US if you run different startups. I have a double-barreled surname which is easily recognisable if you know it.
Our jobs are sensitive. Mine is particularly sensitive. Privacy is an important part of being responsible, and a consideration to friends and family who may not want to get caught up in political debates.
Michael was obsessive over X group chats, Discord, Telegram, and Signal. He'd never heard of Slack at all, which was odd. I wasn't sure who this person was so i kept them separate and used the "I Am Spartacus" firewall. I am very glad i did.
He was obsessed with followers. Envious and enraged at everyone who had 10,000, but he didn't. Hundreds of pounds spent on boosting his own posts and endlessly retweeting old ones with comment chains.
The situation was synergistic, on an initial superficial level. I'm told i'm good at public speaking, but at heart, i'm a writer. I'm happier in the engineering room as someone else does the publicity. So i suggested we need our version of the Telegraph.
I bought restorationist.org.uk on my lunchbreak via my Cloudflare dashboard on Monday May 4 2025, and set it up on the same host i use for Devils Lane and FaithChef. They're the same software, and the former's design is quite similar.
We needed to hook something up which was simple, to prototype out my idea. So i picked the standard Ghost theme "source" with some sensible defaults: Cardo for the headline, Merriweather for the prose as the Reedsy standard. I used Photopea to create a simple logo and masthead. I could tell you the font for the header, but i think we'll leave that as a simple line of questioning for Michael to see if he can actually name it, or answer how many colours it exists in on the server.
My reasoning was 1A hosting for speech protection and i even gave a rundown of the design aesthetic.
You can even see the date modification stamps on the logo files themselves:
I started plotting out the doctrine a bit, which you can see in the site's static pages.
A week later i'd pushed up the basics to get it started.
It wasn't much, but it was something. So i generated some placeholder text to see how it would look at scale once we had articles rolling in.
Michael had used my work on Project Afuera to land an "advisory role" at GB PAC, which was already turning fractious because of my derision of its uselessness. But for him, it was step one on the political career ladder, and i was in the way.
As you can see, he'd told prominent accounts it was his work. It isn't.
Then came a taste of early fame when my Hope Not Hate article was well received. He'd never written a word of it. I'd started a few weeks prior because i'd done a previous dive into Gerry Gable and wanted to dig into Shukman's false passport.
Dave Atherton, again, posting my work and crediting Michael for it.
The next thing i wanted to do was build an AI LLM engine for the useless Lowe Inquiry, which i built out in text-generation-webui on top of Ollama.
Meeting Hyde
Two weeks after we launched, he was suspended from his job at the Nursing and Midwifery Council, where i was surprised to learn he wasn't working as any kind of barrister. He sent me the notice, and it was a serious complaint from multiple employees there about his social media behaviour. He claimed it was a witchhunt by Hope Not Hate, who had sent him an email with lurid allegations he ran an anonymous, utterly disgusting pornography account on X named "YeOldeMoby". I'd seen them myself: a weird obese balaclava-wearing depiction of "Sharpe" constantly posting about female obesity.
It wasn't. And they were right.
This was part of some bizarre tale of two incel trolls called "Moby" and "MI5" which formed a weird in-joke i didn't understand. Michael explained it like this:
What i didn't know was "Moby" was Michael, and his friend – who i know the identity of but won't name – was "MI5 Captain Black." They were essentially online trolls who spent a lot of time insulting people in Silicon Valley.
There are two things i strangely admire about Hope Not Hate: a) they don't mind picking a fight, and b) they're good at research. I've never really considered them any kind of "threat" because they generally pick on lunatics who are trying to resurrect the BNP.
I'm a libertarian at heart, and everything must be solved by more liberty, until it can't be. I consider racism an exceptionally dumb idea, and i've lived all over the world so i know every human culture in existence is racist. I'm a vocal opponent of LGBT-anything as a Christian (alongside my belief it's fascist in nature a lot of the time and full of bullies) but i'd never pick on gays individually because my own view is homosexuality is scientifically-understudied as an irreversible development disorder requiring social accommodation. Plus, they have to triage their time to people bigger than 100-follower Twitter accounts.
In short, Hate Not Hope have no interest in me, and i don't have any interest in them, other than a bizarre fascination by how utterly terrified every group on the British right is of them. I do not like their tactics, and i absolutely stand by my accusation they have strayed way too far into criminal territory in pursuit of a quasi-religious cause.
It was around the same time the drinking binges and pornography emerged. Michael craved money.
Dozens of voice notes were being left in the early hours of the workday morning where he was incoherently drunk. They went on for days at a time. They were accompanied with what can only be described as exceptionally depraved AI imagery of highly obese women depicted in the style of Japanese anime. The severity got worse, and started to include bodily fluids and "feeder" terminology.
(text may not display well in some browsers.)
Lucy Brown, the writer and filmmaker, had me blocked despite the fact we'd never spoken.
This was a blatant lie. It turned out Michael had sent her revolting messages, and she very reasonably assumed we were in league. It was blessing, oddly, as it ultimately led to us being introduced and becoming nascent friends (if she would permit me to call her so.) Lucy is a fearless lioness, and i'm sure she'll set the record straight for anyone who might want to know.
At that point, I was already into the next project building Tell Someone, and it was evident Michael had no interest at all in rape gang crime. He was enraged about being sidelined for a barrister role at Restore Britain after a drinking binge with Charlie Downes. He was pestering Ben Habib (who we'd spoken to briefly before) and Carl Benjamin.
He tried, and succeeded, at meeting Nigel Farage for lunch on Aug 8th with David Atherton and Lois Perry as a recommendation to be a new policy advisor for Reform UK or to stand for MP in Keithley. He wanted time on GB News.
He had a group of "12 Angry Men" on Signal as his "team," and 3 "investors" queued up i took one look at and baulked. I'm half a planet away and i could smell the rot. The group name changed endlessly with grandiose titles like "Founding Fathers," but i finally blew my lid when it became "Restorationist Advisory Board."
I never told Michael anything about myself. In fact, i gave him misleading information deliberately in some cases, as i could sense he was hungry for what he could use. He thought i was single, from about four different places in the south of England, and lived in three different places in California. I could have told him i was a carpenter from Nazareth and he would have believed it if there was a sniff of money or fame.
Some of it was comically absurd. At one point, Ashley Dean-Smith, a rather repulsive wannabe YouTuber who looks like a used car salesman and is on record saying he wants "power by any means," was clearly attempting to record a conversation on Michael's behalf – for the 2nd time, hoping for Cyprus money. So, i intimated i was a police officer by threatening to "arrest" Michael out of anger. Sure enough, it was circulated immediately i was a Hope Not Hate "infiltrator." We were watching in real-time as people deleted their messages. It was the other half's idea; i wanted to go big. but she said be subtle. She was right; they took the bait. It was so preposterous only highly-online, paranoid incels, without a wife to tell them they were mental, would believe it.
Tilly, by contrast, knows the name of the Surrey church leader who went to jail for abusing two of my friends. Dan ("Chris") gave up trying to teach me ASA 101 on a Bahamian island and actually threw me in the water out of frustration because i couldn't tie a bowline knot. The first time i met "Ollie" we were 16 in a West Sussex field and had smuggled 3 entire 3-litre brown bottles of Strongbow cider in our school uniforms and he puked on my arm. Paul was my rival in university i got thrown out of chemistry with for bringing books like "Psychedelic Chemistry" into the lab after we stupidly ordered them through Waterstones, but ended up becoming one of the UK's most influential pharmacologists while i tromped around Africa looking for trouble.
I simply didn't trust Michael Reiners, and i was right. I'm glad i didn't.
What i didn't know at the time was why he wasn't working as a barrister. Two years previously, he claimed to me he'd been in a bad relationship where he'd been "doxxed" online because of false allegations broadcast by an American girlfriend.
His bar registration had been updated to use his middle name, and it was the same tactic he requested as a resolution at this job disciplinary tribunal. But there was no record of him at the BSB despite him saying he'd been the subject of previous complaints and paid their yearly fees. There are no cases in any UK law database citing him as counsel on anything. Reiners has never tried a case despite having graduated in law for several years.
We checked with the Bar. Their response:
I have checked our records and confirm that we have a record of Mr Michael Colin Richard Reiners, who was called to the Bar in July 2022 by Middle Temple. They are currently on our records as an unregistered barrister, which means that they do not hold a Practising Certificate.
What this means is Michael cannot provide legal services to the public that are reserved legal activities (advocacy in courts, litigation, etc.). He must not present himself as practising or taking on clients. He can say “I am a barrister” as a qualification — but not imply he is practising law or regulated for client work, or it can become a possible criminal offence under the Legal Services Act 2007.
Michael's "relationship" with Sydney, a troubled American social media starlet incels love to hate, went badly wrong. And by bad, we're talking bad.
This was almost certainly how Hope Not Hate had pinned him: a simple Twitter search for his name with the girl's username, "custardloaf."
Except, "Sydney," the American girl had "doxxed" him to... the police. She claimed she'd been violently raped and had posted pictures of her in hospital covered in bruises. She fled the country rather than stay and testify in the Crown Court.
His story was she had a "psychotic breakdown" and he was forced to drag her out of his flat to eject her. There was a video of him in a banner mocking her as she explained he'd "poured juice" on her and pictures of her looking gaunt. This person had been the subject of intense cyberbullying to ruin her credibility as much as possible.
The "dispute" is still publicly online.
And Sydney absolutely did speak to the police. Officers attended, and equipment showing Michael's musical account "Utterblax" were shown being examined.
This wasn't "doxxing." This wasn't even close to "doxxing.' It was whisteblowing and crying for help.
Sydney later posted she'd fled the country rather than testify.
The Incidents At Scyldings
Michael had been graciously given a free ticket to The Witan, which had been the target of a Hope Not Hate investigation the year before, and this year was being held at a hotel in Birmingham. He'd told me he was a merely a visitor, but then claimed he was there as a "representative" of the Restorationist in consideration of the good work we'd – well, i'd – been doing.
I'd received a note on X there were rumours circling he'd been stalking a well-known right-wing female influencer's house in London, but brushed it off as wild hearsay. It struck a chord though as he'd made strange comments about her before.
I'm inclined to believe now there is something to that story, and not simply because of the early-hours-alcoholic behaviour. The same person is mentioned in his revolting messages, and she was frantic they were deleted. She also reached out to me on X to repetitively imply how "weird" it was she was mentioned. It also fits the lurid MO Michael drunkenly explained to me of incessantly pestering women until they gave in.
Anyway. Back to the Witan, which was a weekend in Bimingham.
Michael called me from the smoking area, excessively drunk, and was on a mission to find the Hope Not Hate "mole." He'd spent the entire time siting next to the chairman of a certain political party he'd been targeting, and i wasn't amused at the idea of them being photographed. When an awkward guy (an "artist" is how he described himself, and a very timid one at that from my read) followed him outside, he launched into an abusive tirade so harsh it was barely believable ("just fuck off!! why you don't you fuck off!!"). It was alarming. Hyde had appeared. This wasn't exactly the look i was hoping for at a conference.
He apparently spent the next two days drunk out of his mind. A well-known scientific commentator on the British right who traveled there with him (who was absolutely not aware of any of this) maybe able to confirm, should they choose to.
He gloated he had aggressively confronted a well-known female political figure in a hallway of the hotel about an incident where she was guilty of "doxxing." He'd targeted a young female lawyer – also well known – and sexually propositioned her in person and via social media. We eventually saw this message and it was the most bizarre, creepy, and repulsive solicitation one could imagine.
2:28 Terrible form, i've essentially been a sex pest
2:37 Come 427 (dare)
2:39 I just want to cuddle :333
3:33 Oh dear
3:34 I may have embarrassed myself but, sorta still stand by every word?
3:28 Dare you
(unknown) disregard this, i am an evil and treacherous man of ill character etc
This was at a professional event. To a woman he had met once, briefly. Hyde's style was very different to Jekyll. He was just a slimy creature women found repugnant.
Scyldings also recognised who it was immediately after it was disclosed, and were extremely fast to respond with concern.
And most worryingly of all, he boasted he'd sexually targeted another young female in a hotel corridor in a way which was so frightening to her she fled into an elevator. It wasn't clear what had happened and there's no way to know it was true or a drunk nonsense, but i could sense the angry glee in his voice. My fury and incredulity didn't seem to register.
He'd also contacted the woman leading Lowe's rape gang inquiry.
At this point, i'd had enough. The conversations on Slack grew far more intense, and it couldn't continue. The 6-month mark was the cut-off. No more. Something is not right with the guy at all.
No access to the org.uk or server infrastructure. No access to membership data. No access to email management. If we allowed donations, absolutely no access to banking. No introductions to any of the pro real-life group. The key was just to gently move this along peacefully, parting ways in a civil fashion. "Chris" (author pseudonym, real name Dan), who lives in Austin, Texas, and i know from years back and my time in the Caribbean, actually flew out to California to talk about it because he was thinking about flying back to the UK to deal with it in person. He has an immigrant wife and a second infant they recently adopted, and neither of us considered it wise to go down that route. He had my first and middle name, and could be malicious.
We found messages of a utterly bizarre fantasy plot to take over The Mallard (wtf?), on top of another to install Jake Scott as editor of The Restorationist – a guy who had been fired from the Prosperity Institute for appearing in a Hope Not Hate expose, and had a "10k account" Michael was weirdly obsessed with hijacking on X under "Restorationism" which apparently was previously linked the Kemi Badenoch leadership campaign.
It was surreal. With the help of and $15,000 promise from a strange expat called Andrzej Czapiewski, the plan was presumably to convince me to out myself by revealing my ordinary real life within documents from one or more of these dodgy investors (there were at least 3). Michael had registered "Restorationist, LLC" in Delaware through Stripe Atlas without my consent, while drunk, and simultaneously placed his American girlfriend's name as the owner of a charity registration at Companies House.
I sent a warning in writing we needed a partnership agreement to set concrete boundaries and define roles, after just being sick and tired of him taking the piss. This was a hedge, because i was almost already decided there wasn't any way this could go on.
My point is - i never signed up for any of this or to be a prostitute furnishing your career by stroking these people. We never even agreed on starting an LLC, let alone what it was to be called - that says it all, doesn't it? A charity, now? Is that for "us", or for you?
This isn't "we," or "us," it serves you. Frankly i sympathise with your missus about being put onto things without knowledge. I'm not saying that to be nasty: i genuinely share the same frustration. It feels like being a passenger in the Michael ride when i built the fucking car.
What i got back as an agreement was absurd and unprofessional legal garbage from ChatGPT.
I never authorised this. Ever. And never would. This has nothing to do with the Restorationist and never had. I was diplomatic about it and played along, but there was never going to be any realistic chance I was going to use it.
If you request this record, you'll see I'm not on it. You'll see who is.
Michael later registered a company "The Restorationist Ltd" on October 24 2025, three days after he was removed. Take your own guess as to why.
This is a daft scheme to hijack control of the .org.uk domain name. It's misuse of the law and called Reverse Domain Name Hijacking. The general plan here is to manufacture a pretence where he can legitimately claim to be an "owner" of it because he has a single-member company in the US and UK, precipitating a dispute with the registrar. He believes this will give him a weight of evidence to seize control of it, while complaining publicly he was "Zuckerberg'd" out of his "own" creation which never existed. Unfortunately, the dates don't quite match - but he's hoping the dispute will be private.
Michael unfortunately has some trouble here. I also registered many other .uk domain names, as is standard practice for SEO. These are just a few of them. I posted them deliberately on X, and lo and behold they ended up in the complaint. But more on that later.
It's going to be another uphill struggle explaining them all, as well as why the limited company was registered to the address of SAME DAY COMPANY.
This is, of course, fraud.
I had to contact all of them with written declarations and proof: Delaware, Companies House, Same Day Company, Stripe, Cloudflare, Nominet, and more. It
Fraud by false representation
(1) A person is in breach of this section if he—
(a) dishonestly makes a false representation, and
(b) intends, by making the representation—
(i) to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii) to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.
(2)A representation is false if—
(a) it is untrue or misleading, and
(b) the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading.
(3) “Representation” means any representation as to fact or law, including a representation as to the state of mind of—
(a) the person making the representation, or
(b) any other person.
(4) A representation may be express or implied.
(5) For the purposes of this section a representation may be regarded as made if it (or anything implying it) is submitted in any form to any system or device designed to receive, convey or respond to communications (with or without human intervention).
All of this sounds like a preposterous Bond movie arc, but it isn't and wasn't. It was idiotic.
I own the .uk names and tech infrastructure; all the work and copyright is provably mine. It would be an uphill task even with an AK-47, forger's pen, or sedatives. I was later accused of "scaring off" this "investor."
There's not enough time or space to go over all the smaller details, but Michael's pornography escapades had also multiplied. His "investors" were anime porn lovers, and he was seemingly their "dealer". One of them claimed to own 20,000 properties in the US. Andrzej had fled to Cyprus to avoid the annual scheduled days for capital gains tax. He had spent $1000 buying ads on X for himself and the site had locked his card after the usage was flagged for fraud.
Michael had a huge personal investment in the Restorationist for his own reasons, but no actual business agreement in writing or any legal ownership of its infrastructure. He wanted to be the "face" of the Restorationist and wear it like a skin suit – without consent.
He had tried to book himself on the Lotus Eaters podcast and was targeting the Homeland Party next in his career trajectory, along with paying for membership of Restore Britain and Advance UK. Thankfully he'd left GB PAC at my urging (mainly due to my intense dislike of its CEO). He also contacted at least 3 MPs.
Then, Michael was fired by the Nursing and Midwifery Council for gross misconduct.
Allegation 1 is given here to place into context a pattern of behaviour which was experienced and ejected by multiple people:
1. You have posted online content and reposted content which colleagues have found offensive and upsetting.
He voluntarily sent me the written decision, with his home address on it. It was just bizarre, and they seem also as bewildered he was trying to pin internal complaints on a phantom Hope Not Hate witchhunt against him.
There was no Hate Not Hope witch hunt. Michael's employment was terminated for the simple reason his behaviour at work was deemed unacceptable through a two-month disciplinary investigation by their senior counsel. It appears, as one would expect, this cost him his own ability to practice law in the UK. According to the Bar, he is suspended.
Hope Not Hate were planning on exposing him for broadcasting revolting posts. The NMC cited offensive posting as a central conclusion of their termination, and from a brief read of the document they clearly did not want him around. The NMC is a charity, and these facts can be verified through a simple Freedom of Information Act request.
And he'd arranged for himself – without my consent – to "represent" the Restorationist publicly an event by the Traditional Britain Group, and "launch" parties he was organising in London its behalf.
This seemingly went well, but his observation after boasting about a "briefcase of business cards" was much of the audience was unnervingly keen to express their dislike of Jews, in coded language. An unnamed "silent investor" of Starkey's favourite Pimlico Journal wanted to "get money to" the Restorationist.
Make of that what you will. But it was fairly clear my work and this publication was personally feathering Michael's nest, and it would make perfectly sense wanting to take it for himself. I wasn't on board with the program, and I was now a problem.
"I Wake Up Every Single Morning, Rape My Foid"
Tilly is a lovely, beautiful bioscientist who lives in the South of England. She's incredibly sensitive, slightly neurotic, absurdly stubborn, and has a wickedly infectious cackle. Her imagination runs wild and gets her into some absurd territory. She's also a survivor of severe domestic violence and has a heart to work with other women to support them in difficult times. An English eccentric who is very emotional and reactive because her heart is worn on a slightly-autistic sleeve. She's eager to be liked and doesn't know how to handle conflict or sexual aggression well. But she'd be the most loyal and wonderful mother to any man's children they could imagine.
Michael lives with an American girlfriend who seems to be extremely shy, but highly intelligent. His last American girlfriend, "custardloaf" ("Sydney") wrote in her own posts she fled the country rather than testify; as mentioned, he claimed she either self-inflicted her own injuries, or received them while being thrown out of his apartment. These were constructed as a real-time jury defence where she was portrayed to an online mob that she had a "psychotic episode."
His best friend, who i had spoken to briefly as a fellow Christian, was also concerned.
yeah i was chatting to my mate last night who’s close with mike and even he was saying it’s gonna get to a point where mike and the work you’ve done is taken seriously, and the minute he gets into government in some capacity he will be outed for being obsessed with fat women
he keeps talking to me about raping women
he always played it close with this horseface girl when he dm’d her telling her he was gonna skin her a while back
the only time i recall him mentioning anything like this i messaged [girlfriend's name] to ask what was going on and she said there was nothing happening but she deleted her messages which i found quite odd
It transpired Michael had claimed to a mutual contact that he had met his current girlfriend by sending her an unsolicited social media message saying "i'm going to rape you to death."
I'd seen messages like this and simply assumed his alcoholism was spiralling.
"Foid" or "femoid" is internet slang for "female android." It is a derogatory term used by "incels" ("involuntary celibates") which is analogous to "bimbo." The gist is a woman who is externally beautiful, but has no inner life or intrinsic value other than her sexual appeal. Like a doll, or autonomous android robot which happens to be female.
Tilly had mentioned Michael had sent her pornography and abusive messages before and she'd batted them away assuming it was alcoholism, but they'd been escalating beyond what she could fend off. Two other male writers had forwarded messages where he started with a familiar sequence: a) injecting them inappropriately by surprise into a conversation unrelated, b) inquiring whether the recipient found the grotesque image "arousing."
In California, every person who works, anyone, must do harassment training within 72hrs of taking a new position. Everyone recognises this scenario because it is given as the worst kind of incident in the workplace.
I'd demanded these message provocations stop, and noticed how much Michael enjoyed "forcing" them unsolicited on people.
"Alex, he's talking about rape. I don't know what to do. He's been drunk for 3 days, i tracked it."
She wasn't joking, and she later publicly posted the evidence on Twitter/X.
This included solicitation of fetishes for bodily fluids and was exceptionally graphic.
Three days after Michael had boasted to me on the phone about raping his girlfriend, Tilly was next. A clear pattern of escalation. Michael had joked in bad taste to me about "trafficking" (luring, more likely) girls from the US to the UK, and "exporting" them to his pornography-loving friends in the other direction. It's impossible to know the truth of that, but he advertised their online accounts frequently.
I confronted Michael in writing as a Slack channel was simultaneously flooding with screenshots for a long list of evidence. He gloated, insulted me, and mocked Tilly. It also included preposterous "jury-style" defences suggesting we were in a secret relationship or i was being "blackmailed."
As you can read for yourself, he rotated a number of what would be called "defence strategies" in a law class at university, or might be used by a defence barrister in a court.
This is the part which was most concerning:
who is upset here, besides you?
The victims, Michael. The dozen or so victims. They're the ones who are more upset than I am. Also, British and California courts, angry friends and family. Other writers who placed their trust and hopes in you. Not to mention, our readers.
(The locust swarm of sockpuppet accounts on X later began echoing the same sentiments: they wanted it; they enjoyed it; it was victimless; they have no case, etc.)
Which is when we got in contact with Central Southsea and St Judes public protection unit of Hampshire & Isle of Wight police.
The Whirlwind Smear Campaign
The key question at stake, after immediate physical safety concerns we needed to leave to Hampshire police, was what to do if they unearthed much worse. Michael apparently had a previous arrest record they'd find immediately on the PNC and we'd supplied only a selection of messages and documents we had. We had no idea how many people he'd been in contact with.
The week before, he'd boasted about messaging at least 20 "women from GB PAC."
I had to contact each of the media outlets he'd been on, and was planning to go on. Thankfully, they took it seriously. Then i had to contact our subscribers – some of whom support this site financially (he was never given access to Stripe or the payment connection software).
The police reacted quickly, also thankfully. There was no immediate physical risk, thank God. The girlfriend did exist, and the nature of that relationship is somewhat strange, but voluntary. As it often is, until it's not.
My other half, who is a well-known lawyer in Los Angeles, wasn't so forgiving. She had explicitly advised not to engage this person in any capacity, and made clear it was time to injunct him and transfer whatever assets there were into an LLC. Let's just say, lesson learned. Every husband will know exactly what i mean.
What happened next descended into such farce it was staggering. Michael's rage exploded, and he concocted a fabulous story it was a "founder dispute" where he was the actual victim of an upcoming smear campaign. It was just a bit of friendly banter; she enjoyed it; i had a "secret agenda."
- Hundreds of messages were sent to everyone either I or he had ever spoken to, claiming he "owned" the Restorationist and i was the "webmaster" who had experienced a psychiatric breakdown (the same tactics used on a previous campaign), on top of a "dossier" he was collecting to discredit me personally;
- The Restorationist X account was hacked by resetting the email address and defaced with the same lurid allegations;
- The website content management system had draft articles posted under a hidden account;
- Anything he considered might be evidence – such as a simple Discord server – was deleted;
- A smear campaign of epic proportions was mounted across Twitter/X by a well-organised group of incels to claim i was a "secret Hope Not Hate agent" holding "his" website hostage;
- Socketpuppet X accounts clearly and obviously run by Michael began attacking Tilly and others who shared her posts, then mine;
- Threats of doctored screengrabs and edited messages were floated in corners of X trying to advertise false "dirty laundry";
- Victims of these disgusting incidents were contacted to intimidate or manipulate them into changing what they said;
- Michael recruited a group of willing patsies – including his own girlfriend – to contact myself, Tilly, and others (including victims) to lure each person into recorded "incriminating" conversations he could broadcast on social media or send to others.
There was no apology for sending unwanted messages; zero concern at any woman he might have frightened, no ordinary sense of propriety; nor causing havoc to the Restorationist and everyone had worked on it.
Not a shred of shame or remorse.
He was only concerned whether people knew or not, and what they knew.
Tilly meticulously documented this malice and was attacked for being on a "feminist witch hunt" and "stirring trouble." Her post prompted several other women to make contact detailing even more lurid allegations. It taught others what DARVO is. Tilly is not a feminist. Not even close. She despises feminism. But, frankly, these people have a point.
An extremely prominent organisation he joined terminated his membership upon a simple background investigation of the facts. They've indicated they prefer to keep their role modest, without fanfare; but if anyone knew how supportive and proactive they were in helping us through this awful week, it would not only shock their enemies, it would earn them many new friends. It speaks volumes they sought not to politicise what was a disturbing few days, and i can't thank them enough. There are caricatures in the media: some of them are the exact opposite of how they are portrayed.
A week later, Michael messaged a member of Tilly's family.
The content? A chilling legal threat that he knew her real name, and mine. He also included my middle name given in the American version of Companies House. The legal notice was absurd and he wasn't in a position to mount an action of that kind, so it only served as a coded doxxing threat.
Only one problem.
I had briefly mentioned her real name as an author several months ago, but the name i actually wrote was the name of an actress in Santa Monica by mistake on my phone – I got "Millie" and "Tilly" confused. I'm glad i did. He also didn't pick up mine was two first names, despite the fact he publicly goes under his middle name himself.
Tilly and her relative reported it to the police. I made it clear in writing to Michael we would be lawyering up, and we will back any victim he may have abused. No more claiming he was the "owner" of the Restorationist or messaging anyone writing for it.
This is, of course, the same pattern: violating boundaries remorselessly without conscience and getting a thrill out of it. One day, it might end up differently for a girl who doesn't know what's happening.
A worrying amount of people believed these messages and the entire fabricated storyline, including well-known media personalities i'd never met. The entire plan was to discredit me personally and blacken my name as much as possible so nothing i claimed would be believed. As this is being written, over a week later, and rather than looking for a job to support himself and his girlfriend, Michael is still obsessively messaging anyone on X who interacts with any post from Tilly or myself with a "stock" ramble of pseudo-legal conspiracy theory.
This is the same pattern as per girlfriend "custardloaf," where he cyberbullied her into oblivion with flying monkeys and scrubbed anything he could find on the Internet which exposed it.
There's a reason we do this – there are nutjobs out there who really will comb through records to find people they don't know and attack their families.
Let's say it again. I live in California. Life is good here. I have no ambitions in British politics, other than i'd like to visit with family someday without them being at risk of violence or rape. It makes no difference to me if lunatic figures on the right or the left decry something i say on X. I'm no-one. This was, of course, a damage limitation campaign on Michael's part, and a self-report of immense magnitude. When in doubt, shut up.
Many people saw through all of this immediately and were bizarrely supportive to a stranger they'd never met. They had no reason whatsoever to be kind to me. I'd like to name them. And broadcast the nature of their character. But such is their humility they would not allow it. But i will repay in full.
All i will say is one of them isn't Welsh, but lives in Wales, and he writes for the Restorationist. And he happens to be one of the kindest, wisest, most extraordinary, and most Godly men i think Britain could ever ask for. Maybe Britain herself will never know. But i will, and i will go to the ends of the earth for that kind of rare friendship.
Act Three Takes Longer
The trouble with smear campaigns is they look desperate. Evidence mounts. Witnesses come forward. The immediate drama recedes and the facts remain. The second party has their say.
Michael used his legal training to concoct his own legal defence, in real-time. It was chilling to watch, and even more worrying to see how women were afraid he appeared to know the law (his legal ability is actually poor). He strategy was to ruthlessly discredit witnesses, lie, and suppress truth-tellers. He manufactured PR to ensure maximum ambiguity.
He was his own Jekyll defence lawyer for his Hyde perpetrator.
The warning sign about Michael came when a pattern emerged of him deriving pleasure from forcing himself on people in differing ways. He enjoyed it; he took pleasure in it. Whether it was a small website, a woman in a hallway, a media outlet, a conservative MP, or his incel group chats. He was banned from bars in Lincolnshire and deliberately violated the bans while hideously drunk to provoke the owner(s), ending in physical violence.
The key to understanding individuals like this is they can't help themselves but gloat and boast pridefully in what they are and what they've done. Their desires accelerate and overwhelm, becoming hungrier over time.
The literature on escalation relating towards sexual violence is extensive, and its chilling. It is some of the most well-documented phenomena in the academic canon.
- Dating App Facilitated Sexual Assault: A Retrospective Review of Sexual Assault Medical Forensic Examination Charts
- The Course and Nature of Stalking: A Victim Perspective
- Technology-Facilitated Sexual Violence: A Literature Review of Empirical Research
- Online Sexual Harassment Perpetration Among Peer Adolescents: A Cross-National and Cross-Gender Study
- The Confluence Model of Sexual Aggression: The Role of Pornography as a Secondary Risk Factor
- Predicting sexual aggression: the role of pornography in the context of general and specific risk factors
- The relationship between pornography use and harmful sexual attitudes and behaviours: literature review
Across multiple bodies of evidence, sexual violence often follows an escalating pattern. It begins with lower-risk behaviours, such as persistent sexual messaging, online harassment, or compulsive consumption of sexual content, and can progress toward more intrusive acts like coercion, physical contact, and ultimately sexual assault.
What drives that escalation isn’t a single factor. It’s a combination of traits (e.g., entitlement, hostility toward women, impulsivity), environmental reinforcers (pornography featuring degradation or violence, anonymous digital contact), and prior success avoiding consequences. Together, these conditions strengthen permissive beliefs and reduce psychological and practical barriers to injury.
Digital interactions are frequently the starting point: grooming, cyberstalking, and image-based abuse build familiarity and control which can be transferred offline. Likewise, some men who begin with online-only sexual offending (like non-consensual sexual messaging or exploitative media) later cross over into contact offenses. And while pornography alone does not make someone violent, violent or demeaning content can amplify pre-existing risk factors and speed the trajectory.
In short: For a subset of offenders, sexual aggression is not a sudden impulse — it is a progression. Earlier behaviours from years ago which seem “minor” can be the first steps in a growing pattern of boundary violation, entitlement, and risk-taking which, if unchallenged, becomes more dangerous over time.
What US & UK Law Says
The Restorationist was at risk of severe legal liability because of the way Michael Reiners behaved.
As an entity based in Los Angeles, it's important to understand California does not mess about when it comes to sexual harassment or obscenity in the workplace – even in volunteer organisations like the Scouts. The law is the clearest in the whole United States because of the endless litigation around pornography. Due to its relationship with a California-based LLC, and the laws surrounding employee / contributor relations, the Restorationist could have been at extremely serious risk.
California Government Code § 12940 makes it brutally clear:
It is an unlawful employment practice, unless based upon a bona fide occupational qualification, or, except where based upon applicable security regulations established by the United States or the State of California:
(j) For an employer, labor organization, employment agency, apprenticeship training program, or any training program leading to employment, or any other person, because of sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation of any person, to harass an employee, an applicant, an unpaid intern or volunteer, or a person providing services pursuant to a contract.
(k) An employer shall take all reasonable steps necessary to prevent discrimination and harassment from occurring...
Employers have an affirmative duty to take reasonable steps to prevent and promptly correct discriminatory and harassing conduct.
Subdivision (j) explicitly covers harassment “because of sex, gender …” and protects employees, applicants, unpaid interns or volunteers, and persons providing services under contract. Subdivision (k) places an affirmative duty on the employer to take all reasonable steps to prevent harassment. The statute covers both “quid pro quo” harassment and “hostile work environment” harassment.
This isn't a joke in California. It opens you to serious liability if you allow this behaviour to occur or continue, and courts do not take it lightly. It might seem like some trivial Equality Act equivalent from the shores of England, but it's an invitation of a tsunami of lawsuits.
Ironically, in the UK, it is the exact laws Michael Reiners has opined on extensively which convict him of offences.
The first one is simple. Defamation is cut and dry. The Defamation Act 2013 says:
1 Serious harm
(1) A statement is not defamatory unless its publication has caused or is likely to cause serious harm to the reputation of the claimant.
(2) For the purposes of this section, harm to the reputation of a body that trades for profit is not “serious harm” unless it has caused or is likely to cause the body serious financial loss.
The intent was clearly serious harm.
None of the defences apply:
- Truth: there is zero truth in circulated statements. They are comically absurd.
- Honest opinion: these statements were presented as fact (not opinion) and given in bad faith; they gave no basis for the opinion; and an honest person would not have held it – especially seeing proof of domain registration and images of Reiners offering to drink urine.
- Public interest: none.
- Website operation: none.
- Academic: none.
- Privilege: none.
Section 9 relates to entities outside the US, as the Restorationist is:
A court does not have jurisdiction to hear and determine an action to which this section applies unless the court is satisfied that, of all the places in which the statement complained of has been published, England and Wales is clearly the most appropriate place in which to bring an action in respect of the statement.
The UK clearly is the most appropriate place, so the court has jurisdiction. Obviously it does. Michael Reiners lives in Southsea, as given on public records.
The Malicious Communications Act 1988 Act says:
1 Offence of sending letters etc. with intent to cause distress or anxiety.
(1) Any person who sends to another person—
(a) letter, electronic communication or article of any description] which conveys
(i) a message which is indecent or grossly offensive;
(b) any [article or electronic communication] which is, in whole or part, of an indecent or grossly offensive nature,
is guilty of an offence if his purpose, or one of his purposes, in sending it is that it should, so far as falling within paragraph (a) or (b) above, cause distress or anxiety to the recipient or to any other person to whom he intends that it or its contents or nature should be communicated.
This law was meant for poison pen letters and has been used for political purposes. But in this case, it's simple.
- The intent was to cause distress or anxiety, because it was downright malicious and sick.
- These were electronic communications.
- They were grossly disgusting in whole and part.
This wasn't "political" communication and censorship. It was depraved fetish material, libel, and legal malice.
Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, one of the most misused laws, says:
Improper use of public electronic communications network
(1) A person is guilty of an offence if he—
(a) sends by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character; or
(b) causes any such message or matter to be so sent.
(2) A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he—
(a) sends by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that he knows to be false,
(b) causes such a message to be sent; or
(c) persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable, on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or to both.
This clause was meant to deal with letters and dirty phone calls, and is relentlessly abused. But in this case it is entirely applicable. It prompts questions as to its abolition and points to reform instead so it is not used for political purposes.
Again, the offence is clear:
- These messages were sent electronically.
- They were grotesque.
- They clearly provoked annoyance and needless worry.
- They were clearly false.
- And he damned well sent them, over and over.
Yes, these laws are politically abused. But it's important to recognise there are serious situations where remedies are needed. It means reform, and a serious lesson learned. Our Free Speech Act needs more safeguards built in and another look.
Michael likes to opine endlessly about "doxxing." According to his own writing, almost everything qualifies under the Reiners doctrine as "doxxing." When the police charge a defendant or a court sentences them, it's "doxxing" them. When someone sends a picture to someone else, it's "doxxing."
"Doxxing," in the theory of Michael Reiners, is when unfavourable information about his behaviour is revealed by anyone. It doesn't matter if it's behaviour which is depraved, violent, or sickening. It doesn't matter if it's you revealing messages he sent to you about wanting to drink your urine, raping women, and killing people en masse.
What he actually means is "unmasking."
You apparently owe Reiners an imaginable debt of confidentiality in an unspoken hidden contract to protect the privacy of his intrusions, or you will suffer retaliation and mass harassment.
You've "doxxed" Reiners if you tell or blow the whistle. You're a grass; a tattle-tail; a foul traitor; an "infiltrator." He's not remotely sorry. You're the perpetrator for revealing it at all.
This article will inevitably be falsely labelled "doxxing."
Reverse Domain Hijacking
Michael registered a virtual office in London using SAME DAY COMPANY. I found out, and knew what the next step was because it was the same playbook as every time before: scrub the evidence and discredit the victims.
I contacted Nominet, Companies House, Stripe, and Delaware's registrar because i knew what was coming next and why he'd done it.
Lo and behold, the next day, this arrived:
The complaint was so utterly absurd it could only have come from a law graduate who misunderstood the mediation service as a "tribunal." It exists to deal with abusive registrations, not arbitrate disputes between parties like a court.
This complaint is a matter of public record but you can read the simpler version here with simple privacy redactions.
It's hard to know where to start:
- This is clearly ChatGPT (you can tell: it uses this colon phrasing)
- Nominet is not a court or tribunal, it is a mediation service for resolving domain conflicts;
- The disputed domain is wrong;
- The X account name is wrong;
- There is no "mailing list";
- Dear Lord...
It contains batshit, ego-driven inappropriate commentary like this:
Continuity of contributors: the majority of op-ed authors and support staff have chosen to continue with me on a successor site. That decision by those most closely associated with the publication confirms that the public association and goodwill in “The Restorationist” attach to my side of the split.
Section 1 of the DRS Policy defines Reverse Domain Name Hijacking as:
using the DRS in bad faith in an attempt to deprive a Respondent of a Domain Name.
A registration cannot be abusive toward rights that did not exist at the time.
Nominet Experts have found Reverse Domain Name Hijacking in cases where complainants brought disputes in bad faith to deprive legitimate registrants of domain names. Two recent examples are DRS cases D00021240 and D00021075, where the Expert found complaints were brought in bad faith simply to pressure the respondent into surrendering domains, and these findings were noted as potentially damaging to the complainants' reputations in future proceedings.
Nominet experts have dismissed identical “retroactive co-founder” stories many times (e.g. DRS 10758 oakmount.co.uk, DRS 10662 puraglobe.co.uk, DRS 10891 innatewellness.co.uk).
Simply put, it's mental, vindictive, and retaliatory. But it's also incredibly grandiose and malicious. And if you didn't know this guy actually sucks at law, you could easily be intimidated.
Private Property & Hypocrisy
I could not "fire" Michael Reiners in any meaningful sense. I terminated any voluntary partnership, any implied contract (spoken or unspoken) we had, or any association with this website or its operations – which i devised, designed, entirely own, pay for, and have exclusively maintained – because, in my view, upon having experienced it myself personally and seeing the irrefutable evidence, he presented an exceptionally serious risk to its future and those contributing to it.
I took the same decision the Nursing and Midwifery Council did for one reason or another. And Bar of England and Wales seemingly did for a different one. As social media sites and bars in Lincolnshire have also done. And now political parties in the UK have done after seeing the evidence.
And even the people i wrote the "definitive case against" – Hope Not Hate – what one might consider my enemies - also did.
If someone like this was willing to try this against a stranger halfway across the world, imagine what he would be capable of doing to a younger woman nearby who was isolated and vulnerable. Well, in fact, we already know.
When he was publicly outed for domestic violence, he concocted a story he was the victim of "doxxing" by a mentally ill woman and whipped up a firestorm of bullying to discredit her. When he was suspended from the Nursing and Widwifery Council, he concocted a story he was the victim of persecution by Hope Not Hate and threatened to sue them. When he was removed from the Restorationist, he concocted a story he'd been "Zuckerberg'd" from "his" site by a "webmaster" having a mental breakdown, and whipped up a firestorm of bullying to discredit me. His last scheme was to concoct a story he owns the Restorationist because of fraudulent company registrations. The pattern is unmistakable.
Next will come doctored screenshots, and a fraudulent report to "discredit" this one. It's all too predictable. I was sent the details of the "new project" of this incel group and it's essentially an Excel spreadsheet by Dean-Smith, attempting to emulate Charlotte Gill with lists of "DEI" officers and council expenditures through FOIA requests.
As Dade Circuit Judge Edward D. Cowart infamously said to another former law student in 1979:
You’re a bright young man. You’d have made a good lawyer. I’d have loved to have you practice in front of me. But you went another way, partner.
In my personal opinion, after knowing him even superficially for over six months, it is my genuine belief Michael Reiners is an exceedingly calculated and depraved sexual predator. And I maintain the belief several of his "associates" are, in tandem. I pray I am entirely wrong. And as a Christian, i am commanded to pray for my enemies and those who try to harm me, regardless of the circumstances or how imperfect a man I am.
But ultimately it simply doesn't matter – it's my private property, and US law says I have the freedom to do what I wish with it.
My choice to use that freedom to hold myself to the same standards i hold my adversaries to. I asked how long the CPS would tolerate Hope Not Hate's behaviour. Now i ask the same of us. We have harboured it, unwittingly or otherwise. We are accountable. I am accountable.
If i'd have wanted to "doxx" Michael, there was plenty of opportunity and material: his home address; the name and details of his girlfriend; his supervisor at work and best friend; his birth certificate filing; the well-known people he sent messages to; the content of them so lurid the police will need specialists for. Right down to the exact amount of savings in his bank account to sustain himself over the next two years. He, himself, wanted to get caught and for people to know. He wanted to taunt Hope Not Hate. He splashed it all over the Restorationist timeline in duper's delight.
Why didn't i know? Why didn't i realise sooner?
No, WorldByWolf, i am not a secret MI5 double agent for Hope Not Hate. I just didn't search his name on X. Neither did you. They did.
I met Jekyll, and it was only three months in when Hyde emerged. I was 4000 miles away. I still am, as he feverishly searches California records and regisrers companies.
Did you know when your local grooming gang arrived? Or that family member? How close were you?
Michael Reiners is welcome to attempt to dispute any of the facts in this article via counsel or the courts of the United States or of England and Wales. The worst were omitted. Good luck: [email protected]
