A legal blogger has told a court that he was bombarded with emails and messages from a solicitor over several months, culminating in the sender appearing in person at his front door.

Daniel Cloake, who writes under the name Mouse in the Court, told Snaresbrook Crown Court today that solicitor Andrew Jonathan Milne’s behaviour was ‘deranged’ as he constantly invited him to his holiday home and sent him messages filled with sexual innuendo.

Milne, admitted in 1986, was convicted of stalking earlier this year at Stratford magistrates’ court. He is appealing the conviction before a judge and two magistrates. 

Giving evidence from behind a curtain, Cloake said he received several emails a day over five months in 2024. Many of them ‘gibberish’, he said but several threatened Cloake with litigation and others talked about how Milne would pay him thousands of pounds to start a sexual relationship.

‘It was almost like a tidal wave of correspondence,’ said Cloake. ‘There seemed to be no escape from this relentless deluge. He spent the whole day fixated on trying to provoke some sort of reaction and it was all weird stuff.’

The court heard that Cloake had started writing about Milne when the solicitor was involved in civil litigation in 2019, and had filmed him outside the court as he tried to ask questions. There had been few interactions until March 2024 when the journalist attended a  hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice. Cloake twice accepted Milne’s invitations to go to lunch at the nearby Law Society Six Clerks restaurant. After that, Cloake told the court, he had only a single interaction with Milne, to briefly thank him for a piece of information, and he ignored numerous further offers of lunch and dinner.

At the first lunch meeting, Cloake recalled, Milne had offered him £5,000 for the copyright of the video taken in 2019. At the second lunch, Cloake said, Milne joked about making Cloake his sex slave at weekends, and said they should have been dining at the Savoy so they could stay in the hotel afterwards.

In follow-up emails, Milne offered Cloake money to stay with him and talked about him being a prostitute, the court heard. Cloake said he found these messages ‘offensive’, adding: ‘[Milne] was under the impression I was obsessed with him which is why I had attended the hearings.’

Milne referred to Cloake repeatedly as a ‘hot fox’ and wrote that the blogger was attracted to older men because his father had been absent as a child. The court was told that Milne found out about Cloake’s family through going through property records and he also discovered Cloake’s birthday, sending him a book written by MP Chris Bryant about the struggles of homosexual men through history.

Some correspondence labelled ‘without prejudice’ described how Milne was considering litigation against Cloake, the court heard. One 'incredibly scary letter' referring to the value of Cloake's home as a potential asset. Cloake told the court: ‘The idea that I might lose my home was quite frightening and these were huge sums of money that were being talked about.’

The court heard that Milne talked about coming to Cloake’s home and ‘exploring his mousehole’, which the recipient felt amounted to a sexual threat. He also felt blackmailed when the solicitor threatened him with litigation but then talked in the same email about how they could start a relationship.

Cloake said that in August 2024 Milne came to his house while he was out, waiting for nine minutes. Doorbell video footage was played to the court. Milne then left a letter saying how the blogger could be his sexual slave and saying how he had talked with his neighbours about how they were in a relationship, Cloake said. 

After speaking with another journalist, Cloake said he decided to report matters to the police. He also told the court he had sent Milne’s emails to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. ‘I was really hoping the SRA would have done something,’ he told the court, but added that there had been no response. ‘I did not realise just how utterly useless the SRA are.’

Cloake was due to be cross-examined by Milne’s representative on Wednesday. The case continues.