Difficult staff member

[NYLass70]

I line manage approx 25 staff.
A well know difficult staff member recently made a complaint I had bullied him in response to me beginning to capability manage him.
I was cleared at fact finding.
I found out that a member of my team anonymously reported to another Manager that the difficult staff member has e mailed a group of my staff encouraging them to take a complaint out on me and to say I am bullying them.
I have absolutely never bullied any staff and am in fact probably a bit soft if anything.
None have complained as yet.
I have raised this with my line manager however she is saying as it has been anonymously reported we cannot take it any further as it would breach GDPR if we requested an e mail search.
Does this sound right ?
Seems so wrong someone can encourage others to take a complaint out yet I can do nothing.
I am not worried as there is no evidence at all but I feel said staff members behaviour is inappropriate and it is damaging my reputation.

As it's in house company wise, I thought it's shareable, and it could be classed as misconduct due to encouraging false information ?

I wouldn’t worry about it if you’re not a bully. This woman clearly has a personal vendetta

What do you mean by well known staff member? As in, they’re popular? Or they have a reputation for something?

I call BS on your manager’s response. Management are able to check emails whenever they want, that’s not a GDPR breach lol. Any email you receive/send is the intellectual property of the company.

I think searching staff email is a bit far. If someone is unreasonable then other people will recognise that too. Other people won't raise complaints based on nothing so try not to worry

The fact they’ve raised a grievance at the point of a performance review should raise managers questions about its veracity I’d say. It’s something that happened to me and my HR dept were very aware it was likely raised to distract from concerns about the persons capability to do their job.

Sorry to hear
You have such a sly shitty snake 🐍 of a work colleague to work alongside Op