AN online political blogger could not explain the presence of his finger prints on an envelope containing a threatening message sent to a police chief.

But David Lindsay, who denies sending the missive in which reference is made to 57 named Durham county councillors having a “price on their head”, in the row over a review of teaching assistants’ pay and conditions, said his prints could be on the letter, itself, as he often used paper accessible to many people in public libraries.

He was giving evidence on the third day of his trial, in which he is accused of sending the anonymous letter, in February 2017, to Durham’s then Chief Constable, Mike Barton, while he is also accused of trying to shift blame by asking a fellow blogger in the US to send three further letters, two to clergymen in his home village of Lanchester and one to himself.

In these, also anonymous letters, threats are made to Mr Lindsay and to female police officers in County Durham, if he was to be acquitted over that initial allegation.

Mr Lindsay, whose mother was a teaching assistant at the time, confirmed he backed the campaign against their terms being modified, but he said his support was of a lawful political nature and he would not resort to sending such a letter.

Asked by prosecution counsel, Peter Sabiston, about similarities in the language and references in the letter to terms used in his blog posts, he said any keen follower of politics would have been aware of those issues.

Mr Sabiston said it must have “astounded” Mr Lindsay when police approached him with the letter asking if he was responsible.

He replied: “I was never so shocked in my life.”

Mr Sabiston said: “It’s a letter with your finger prints on about the very topic you had been blogging about.”

Mr Lindsay said at the time it was not said his prints were on the letter, but he added: “Thousands of people had been blogging about it.”

He also denied urging the US blogger to send the further letters, claiming he never emailed him, and adding he had, “absolutely no idea” why he would threaten him, as they had never fallen out.

Mr Lindsay, 42, of Foxhills Crescent, Lanchester, denies sending a letter with intent to cause distress and anxiety and doing an act or acts tending or intended to pervert the course of justice.

The trial continues today.