This January 2015 email and LinkedIn exchange shows Mike Leidig contacting Heidi Blake shortly after seeing that she had joined BuzzFeed. The significance of the document is that Blake was not an unknown BuzzFeed reporter to him. Leidig had previously worked with The Sunday Times Insight team, including Blake, and regarded her as a trusted investigative contact. That prior trust included his earlier involvement in advising against an attempted Sunday Times Insight entrapment operation involving a Bulgarian family and an alleged attempt to buy a baby. Against that background, Leidig reached out after reading about Blake’s new BuzzFeed role in Press Gazette, congratulating her and suggesting possible future collaboration on serious investigations. He specifically mentions child trafficking, a new investigations team, and the desire to place investigations with editors who could find the right outlet for them. Blake responded warmly, saying she would “love to chat” about the investigations, but suggested waiting until February because she and Jonathan were under pressure on their FIFA book deadline. Leidig’s follow-up email is also important because it sets out his editorial and commercial position before BuzzFeed’s later attack on CEN. He explains that CEN’s tabloid stories funded the rest of the agency’s work, including public-interest investigations, and contrasts that model with taking money from PR firms, marketing companies or vested-interest sponsors to place material in a news feed. He also says money is not the main priority and that he would be happy to work for free on the right story if it helped build the reputation of the work. The document therefore records Leidig approaching Blake in good faith as a trusted former Sunday Times Insight contact and potential investigative partner, only months before BuzzFeed published its attack on CEN. It also includes Leidig forwarding a CEN story about former Austrian interior minister and MEP Ernst Strasser being allowed to return to work just two months into a corruption jail sentence.