Blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia said this morning that she is preparing a civil suit against Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando over comments he made about her in a One TV interview this morning.

She said that the Nationalist MP had described a fabricated scenario in which he claimed that she had rang him to say that Richard Cachia Caruana was working against him in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 general election.

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"I have denied this under solemn oath in court, during a confrontation of witnesses in which Dr Pullicino Orlando repeated the same lie during a libel suit instituted by Richard Cachia Caruana against the newspaper Malta Today.

"When Dr Pullicino Orlando made the same claim yet again while speaking in parliament on 18 June, I released a statement to the press that same evening, categorically denying his accusations and saying that I would sue him if he repeated them outside parliament where he is covered by privilege.

"I am currently speaking to my lawyers and a civil suit is in preparation. Any person of common sense would understand that I would never have had any interest in, incentive to or inclination towards betraying a friend of more than two decades' standing, and moreover to somebody I had known for just three weeks or thereabouts," Mrs Caruana Galizia said.

She said that she found Dr Pullicino Orlando's repetition of the same stories, even in the face of denials and statements by those he named, as outrageous and offensive.