Mensch and Heat Street have since courted controversy by promoting unverified claims, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories about the Trump administration and its ties to the Russian Federation.

[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Zack Beauchamp, a reporter for Vox who has written at length about Mensch, compared the conspiratorial nature of her output to that of Alex Jones, saying "I would say the closest analog would be Infowars".

[20] Mensch went on to a career writing novels in the chick lit fiction genre, publishing seventeen works in all: fifteen of which have appeared under her maiden name.

[26] By 1997, she returned to the Conservatives, helping her mother Daphne win a seat on East Sussex County Council from the Liberal Democrats;[25] and campaigned in the 1997, 2001 and 2005 general elections.

[30] In October 2006, she was selected to stand in the constituency of Corby, which she won at the 2010 general election with a majority of 1,951, defeating Labour incumbent Phil Hope.

[31] On 19 July 2011, in the hearings of the House of Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport, Mensch interrogated James and Rupert Murdoch concerning their roles in the News of the World phone hacking scandal.

[32] Political blogger Bagehot in The Economist named Mensch as the "surprise star" of the hearing, writing that her "sharp, precise, coolly scornful questions" contrasted with her "waffling, pompous" fellow committee members, and citing her clever confrontation of the Murdochs.

[33] In the course of the hearings, Mensch erroneously stated that Piers Morgan had written in his autobiography about conducting phone hacking while he was the editor of the Daily Mirror.

[35] Three days after the hearing, Mensch received an email that alleged, among other things, that she had taken drugs and danced while drunk with violinist Nigel Kennedy at a club in Birmingham in the 1990s.

[36][37] Mensch publicly released the email, stating that the allegations were "highly probable" but said that she regretted only that others had to see her dancing and that she would not be deterred from asking further questions about phone hacking.

Following the rioting in England in 2011, Mensch called for social media services Twitter and Facebook to be shut down or to "take an hour off" during disturbances to stop the spread of false rumours wasting police resources.

[42] In June 2012, a man was given a 26-week prison sentence suspended for two years for sending Mensch an offensive and threatening email including threats to her children.

The tweets were subsequently reported in the mainstream press, and she drew praise and support from Twitter users for drawing attention to the issue, as well as from public figures Jeremy Vine and Isabel Hardman.

Former Labour party deputy leader John Prescott "tweeted that Mensch's behaviour breached the Independent Press Standards Organisation's code on harassment", The Guardian reported at the time.

Mensch, the Daily Beast has reported, has "resorted to ad hominem attacks on people with whom she disagrees ... notably accusing Naval Reserve intelligence officer and former FBI double agent Naveed Jamali of disseminating 'what can only be described as pro-Kremlin propaganda".

"[4] In June 2012, Mensch joined forces with former Labour digital adviser Luke Bozier to set up a social networking website, a politics-based rival to Twitter.

[54] After leaving Parliament and moving to the US in 2012, Mensch began working as an independent journalist and also wrote articles for several newspapers, including The Times,[55] and The Guardian.

[59][61][62] The blog is controversial, and cites unnamed sources in the intelligence community, publishing numerous conspiracy theories that have either remained unverified or debunked altogether.

[63] In November 2016, Heat Street published an article titled "Exclusive: FBI 'Granted FISA Warrant' Covering Trump Camp's Ties To Russia", written by Mensch.

[4] Mensch has also accused numerous people and organizations of being Russian "shills", "moles" and "agents of influence", including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel,[11][82] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and elements of Mossad (Israel's intelligence service).

[62][84] Mensch claimed that former U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner was brought down as the result of a Russian intelligence operation to put the Clinton emails back in the news in the final days of the 2016 presidential election, saying: "I can exclusively report that there is ample evidence that suggests that Weiner was sexting not with a 15 year old girl but with a hacker, working for Russia, part of the US hacking group 'Crackas With Attitude', who hacked the head of the CIA, and a great many FBI agents, police officers, and other law enforcement officials."

[38][86][87] In June 2011, she married American music manager Peter Mensch, whom she first met 20 years earlier,[88] and resided with him in New York City until their divorce in August 2019.

[citation needed] Mensch disclosed in May 2016 that she was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which made her realise she was "self medicating" with wine for stress, and as a result, has thus almost completely given up alcohol.