SIR Keir Starmer faces questions over why his allies paid for US investigators to dig up dirt on British journalists.
Labour Together, which helped propel Sir Keir to the party leadership, gave a lobbying firm £36,000 to check reporters’ “backgrounds and motivations”.
APCO tried to falsely link two Sunday Times journalists to Russia.
Parts of its dossier were shared with UK spy agency GCHQ, which declined to investigate.
Josh Simons, now Cabinet Office minister, had commissioned it while at think tank Labour Together after a Sunday Times probe into donations.
Labour MP Stella Creasy said: “Genuinely shocked to read this and what happened.
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“Shameful.”
Tory Nick Timothy said: “Labour Together took Starmer to the leadership of his party.
“It paid foreign lobbyists to smear the journalists who investigated.
“Starmer has serious questions to answer.”
Matt Goodwin, a telly presenter and Reform’s candidate at the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election, blasted: “Utterly disgraceful.
“Labour paid for a dirty smear campaign against journalists. Doesn’t surprise me at all.”