EZRA LEVANT ｜ U.K. police arrest comedian over 'mean tweets'
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Summary
Ezra LeVant talks to Kian Bextie, a Rebel News alumnus who is being investigated by Canada's election officers for a story he wrote that was 100% true, but the liberals didn t like it. And Ezra gives his thoughts on the arrest of a British comedian for three mean tweets.
Transcript
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Hello my friends, lots of free speech talk today. We'll talk with Kian Bextie, our Rebel News
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alumnus, who's being investigated by Canada's elections officers for some story he did that
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was 100% true, by the way, but the liberals didn't like it. So we'll talk to Kian. And also I'll give
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you my thoughts about the arrest of a British comedian for three mean tweets. I think it's
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very interesting and I think things are starting to boil over in the UK. That's today's show,
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but first let me invite you to become a subscriber to what we call Rebel News Plus. It's the video
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version of this podcast. We have some video clips I want to show you today, so it's a lot better to
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be able to see the story, not just hear it. And of course the $8 a month, it supports Rebel News and
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keeps us strong. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com. Tonight, UK police arrest a beloved comedian for
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making mean tweets. What's going on over there? It's September 2nd and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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How do you know if you're living in a police state? Most of the time, I think, you don't really know.
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It's not like police come up to you all the time and interfere with you all the time.
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If you keep your head down, if you mind your own business, if you stay indoors, if you keep your
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thoughts to yourself, you probably had very little interaction with your rulers in any given police
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state. That is, if you chose to strictly govern yourself, the state wouldn't feel the need to
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govern you directly. I'm quite sure it was that way in the Soviet Union and even in Nazi Germany if you
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weren't Jewish. Just keep your head down. I know that's the case because I actually know a fair
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number of Russians who left the Soviet Union during the brief period of what they called detente with
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the West in the late 1970s. These were Russians who were allowed to emigrate to the West. They said
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they had two ways of talking. The first, when they were in public or when they didn't know the people
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who they were with very well. It was a defensive way of talking, assuming whatever they said would
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be reported to a secret policeman. And then there was how they spoke with their absolutely closest and
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most trustworthy friends and family when they could let their guard down and whisper the truth to each
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other. I don't know if you could even do that now, though. I mean, think of every electronic device
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that tracks you and listens to you right now. Imagine trying to go without your phone, which knows
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your location by GPS. It knows who you were meeting. How would you even arrange a meeting without your
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phone, without email, without texting? None of that. It would be very difficult to live that life now.
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But the fear of avoiding the attention of the police was a constant. I had a friend from the Soviet Union named
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Eugene who came over during Daytona. Maybe I told you this story before. And he went to the University
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of Calgary when he came over. And I went to U of C as well for my undergrad. And at the University of
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Calgary, in case you don't know it, it has nice big lawns. And then there's sidewalk paths traversing
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these lawns. Here's an actual picture of the U of C, one of the lawns. But you know how it is with public
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lawns and sidewalks. Sometimes it's shorter and quicker to walk on the lawn a little bit
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rather than walk straight and then make a 90 degree turn. Take a bit of a shortcut.
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My point is that Eugene told me that he would be walking at University of Calgary with his friends
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and they would turn to go a certain way, maybe to class or whatever. And they'd walk a little
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bit on the lawn to get to the next paved sidewalk, but not Eugene. He said he would stay on the sidewalk,
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even though it was sort of ridiculous, like a robot or something, walking straight and then
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making a 90 degree turn rather than just cutting the corner like his friends. And he told me,
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his friend said to him, what on earth are you doing? And he told me he had never really thought
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about it. But the real answer was, back in the Soviet Union, if you walked on the grass
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at a place like a university, as opposed to staying strictly on the sidewalk, it was
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an absolute certainty that some policeman would come up to you, perhaps in a uniform,
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but just as likely some secret policeman and take your name and write down your details and put it
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in your file. That's what he said to me. And the fear of tracking the attention of the state was so
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inculcated into him. It was second nature after, I don't know, he was 20 or 25,
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that it was, he was programmed, even how he walked. The story is, is pitifully sad,
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but he told me his friends asking him that was sort of a crisis and epiphany. And he chose at that
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moment not to live like that anymore. And he would walk on the lawn if he had to, if he wanted to.
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But what a story about conditioning, to be a prisoner, even if you're not in prison, to be your own prison
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guard in your own mind. That's what he had become after living in the Soviet Union his whole life.
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That's what it was like in the 1970s in the USSR. But the thing about 2025
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in the United Kingdom is you cannot hide from the secret police. Being alone, being out at night,
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being with your secret close friends, none of that actually gives you immunity or insulation from
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today's version of the KGB. I put it to you as far more pervasive than the police states of the past.
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George Orwell, in his book 1994, predicted many things, including a TV set called a telescreen
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that listened to you. That was in the book, 1984. He predicted newspeak, truth or lies, freedom and
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slavery. But he could not imagine the panopticon of the year 2025. Panopticon is an interesting word,
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isn't it? Sort of it means to see everything. That's literally what it means. That's what Jeremy
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Bentham, the philosopher, called a circular prison that he designed where prisoners were like in an
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outer ring and guards were in an inner hub and everyone was under surveillance all the time.
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Bentham came up with that idea, I don't know, 250 years ago. And hundreds of prisons are actually
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set up that way. But like I said, there's no need for an actual cop to have eyes on you in an actual
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jail. Now the machine spies on you, the matrix spies on you. It's called the algorithm. It's called
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machine learning. That's how it got to know who to target and who not to. It's not even humans doing
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the censoring these days. I don't think in history there has ever been less privacy than there is now.
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And good luck living off the grid. Which brings us to the case of Graham Linehan. I'm not exactly sure
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how to pronounce his name even. I only just learned about him. He's the creator of the British-Irish
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comedy called Father Ted. Now this morning I watched a whole episode of Father Ted to understand who he
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was. And let me just say, God bless the British and the Irish, but holy do they ever have a different
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sense of humor over there. But they say he's a bit like the Seinfeld of the United Kingdom,
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just sort of the star comedian who created this great sitcom. That's what they say. Father Ted was
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popular for a while, but Graham Linehan, or Glynner as the Brits call him online, he's gotten a bit
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political in his old age. Like J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, he has started
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to speak out against transgenderism, just like J.K. Rowling. He tweets about it a lot. In fact,
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if you scroll down his Twitter feed, frankly, he's deeply motivated by it. He thinks about it a lot.
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And it looks like he's in some litigation about it too. His pinned tweet from a few days ago,
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um, don't forget next week on Thursday and Friday, 4th and 5th, when I'll be on trial in the UK
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for crossing a trans activist and his willing goons from the Metropolitan Police.
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Do come along to say hello. Well, little did he know he was in America coming home for that court
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battle that the police would pick him up, five police, and apparently they were armed, which is
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not normal in the UK. And they held him and they grilled him for hours and they charged him with
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illegal tweeting. That's the thing, I guess. Here's a post by Sir Toby Young of the Free Speech Union,
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who said Glynner was arrested under suspicion of having committed an offense under Section 3A
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of the Public Order Act. Section 3A says, quote, a person who distributes or shows or plays a recording
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of visual images or sounds which are threatening. He's guilty of an offense if he intends thereby
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to stir up religious hatred or hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. Glynner cannot possibly be
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guilty of this offense since it makes no reference to transgender status. And all three of the tweets
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the police questioned him about referred to trans rights activists. And then he concluded,
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for that reason, there is zero chance of the Crown Prosecution Service bringing a case against Glynner.
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Well, far be it for me to disagree with an expert like Sir Toby, but maybe it's not actually about
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securing a conviction. Maybe charging him is about terrorizing people into silence, including him
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himself, but more about others. Maybe it's about shaming Glynner or showing that they're, you know,
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no matter how powerful or popular they are, no one is safe if you transgress transgenderism. That
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there's always someone listening to them, that their words are now crimes. And even though real crimes go
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unpunished in the UK, your thought crimes won't. Maybe it's not about the law at all.
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The whole thing was so stressful, by the way, the doctors had to be called for his incarceration.
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They were worried he was going to have a stroke. That's what that picture is about.
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So what were the tweets that he tweeted? Well, for one thing, thousands of people have since retweeted,
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reposted those comments, giving them far more viewership than had police not arrested him.
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I'll read them. The first says, if a trans identified male is in a female only space,
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he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the police. And if all else fails,
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punch him in the balls. It's advice for women and girls who discover a man in a women's private
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place like a bathroom. There's an obvious joke to be made here. The police would probably insist that you
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say, punch her in the balls. Her. But you have to go through that sort of trutherism, don't you?
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You have to use their made up names and say her and say ma'am. Here's another tweet that says,
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a photo you can smell. I don't know what he's getting at or who he's getting at. But again,
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it's probably rude. But so what? This is the UK. You're allowed to be rude. And then the last one,
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he says, I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F them. Again, probably rude. Let's agree it's
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rude. But, but so what? That's a crime. Five armed police pull you over and grill you.
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Now these, all, all three of these posts were from months ago. And Linehan just came back from America.
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Not sure if he wrote those tweets when he was in America, but he was writing them on an American social
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media platform. And now he's been arrested in London for writing on an American website. And
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the police refused to bail him unless he promised to stop posting on Twitter or X, as it's now called.
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Do they have the power to do that? Can, can any pro transgender cop arrest someone who is rude
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towards trans people and say, stop tweeting or you'll stay in jail?
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Well, of course. And that's why I disagree with my friend Sir Toby is that it may not be lawful,
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but it works. Hey, didn't Donald Trump and JD Vance specifically ask the UK prime minister,
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Keir Starmer about all this? Not about Linehan's case, obviously, but about censorship in general.
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Yeah. Look, I said what I said, which is that we do have, of course, a special relationship with our
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friends in the UK and also with some of our European allies. But we also know that there have been
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infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British, of course, what the British
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do in their own country is up to them, but also affect American technology companies and by extension,
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American citizens. So that is something that we'll talk about today at lunch.
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We've had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom, and it will last for a very,
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very long time. Well, no, I mean, certainly we wouldn't want to reach across US citizens,
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and we don't. And that's absolutely right. But in relation to free speech in the UK,
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I'm very proud of our history there. Yeah, it hasn't stopped, has it? In fact,
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I think it's gotten worse. You know, over the weekend, a British woman was arrested for flying
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a flag. Seriously, not a Palestinian flag, a British flag. They're putting up union flags.
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That's the multicolored British flag. And they're putting up English flags. And I've seen Scottish flags
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flags go up. It's a sign of national pride and rejecting mass immigration. 30 arrests a day for
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that sort of thing. 30 arrests for social media posts a day in the UK. If you told me that Russia
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or Iran was arresting 30 people a day for wrong think online, I would tell you, I honestly think
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you're exaggerating, unless perhaps there's a big crackdown going on 30 a day. No, that is the average
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now in the UK. There's been widespread chatter about this case because Glynner is a TV guy, a comedy guy,
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a popular guy. Not quite Seinfeld, I don't think, but something like that. And I think a lot of Brits
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have had it with trans. Even their own high court ruled there are just two sexes. But who cares what
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the courts say? And who cares if the police exceeded their powers? As Sir Toby Young alleges,
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the point is to demoralize, to harass, to show who's boss, to warn, to deter, to deter others.
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And if you have to have a few show trials, so be it. The Brits are getting unhappily good at having
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those. But I'm seeing something more and more. Brits outright asking America for help. Here,
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look at this clip from the biggest news network in the UK, GB News. Watch for a few minutes.
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Listen, Elon Musk has just tweeted to say that he believes that we're living in a police state.
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The Graham story, obviously, is a semi-active case now. We have to be a little careful about what we
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say about that. And I'd be interested to hear how the debate goes there on that issue. But yeah,
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free speech is massive here. If you could pick an issue that the American government and the British
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government are poles apart on, it is that. We've heard J.D. Vance, the vice president,
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talking about the fact that he worries for the UK. And that is an issue that I'm going to be raising
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every single time I can here at the White House. I did similar in Scotland. You might remember when
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Donald Trump came over. I talked about free speech with Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump. It's a
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massive issue here. And I'm glad we're keeping that conversation alive. Elon Musk is doing some
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heavy duty tweeting about it, too. That makes things go viral. Hundreds of millions of views. But Elon
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Musk is American, so he can love free speech in the First Amendment. The problem is the UK, isn't it?
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And for the Brits themselves, the journalists, the activists, the politicians,
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for them to say they're leaning on the US, they're hoping for help from the US,
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that's actually a pretty extraordinary thing. In one way, it's quite sad.
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It suggests the UK can't fix its own problems. But in another way, whatever it takes to regain
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freedom, right? I mean, that's how I'm starting to feel about Canada. I don't want foreigners to
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solve our problems. But maybe we need a little bit of help. I mean, the greatest free speech
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champion for our country is probably not in our country. I think something's gonna break. I think
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Trump might start to feel like he's being lied to by Keir Starmer about the UK's dedication to
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freedom. And who knows, if Trump feels lied to, he might just do something like slap a country
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with a big tariff. I mean, who knows? But I do know something, the UK is waking up and rising up,
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massive street protests against migrant hotels, massive waves of people, normal people, mums even,
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protesting against the government, people who have never protested before. And on September 13th,
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less than two weeks from now, the largest free speech rally in UK history led by our friend Tommy
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Robinson. And can you believe it? I'll be speaking at it. That'll be a momentous day and hopefully one
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that helps set the UK free. Stay with us for more about freedom of speech here in Canada.
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Over the last year, we've seen a massive potential for foreign election interference. I'm not just
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talking about the general election. I'm talking about the all online leadership selection process
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for the Liberal Party of Canada. More votes were discarded, more votes were rejected
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by Liberal Party members than were accepted. And there was never an explanation. How did a quarter
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of a million liberals get disenfranchised? And how was it that in a statistical impossibility,
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the winner, Mark Carney, got plus or minus 5%, the identical result in all 338 districts in the country,
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even winning implausibly in the home ridings of his opponents? Are you telling me that Christia
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Freeland, after a decade of representing the university district of University of Toronto,
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lost by the same majority, same proportion as every other district in the country? It was just
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implausible. That whole thing was completely uninteresting to Elections Canada, just as the 11
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Chinese agents interfering with the last federal election were completely uninteresting to Elections
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Canada. I tell you all this because I think I've discovered where their investigators have been.
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They've been investigating citizen journalists, including our friend Kian Bextie, an alumnus of
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Rebel News, who is now with Juno News, who joins us now from Alberta. Kian, great to see you again.
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Why don't you tell our viewers? I don't think this is going to shock our viewers because our viewers
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are ready for the worst. Tell us what Elections Canada wrote to you a couple of weeks ago.
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What are they threatening you with? What are they accusing you of?
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Yeah, so they're accusing me of violating some arcane law that has not been used against anyone
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other than me that we can tell, that basically says you're not allowed to lie about a candidate
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going into public office, about them breaking the law in some other capacity, which is not what we
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did, obviously. We reported the news during election period that we believed at the time,
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and still do, to be 100% accurate. There's nothing that leads us to believe we were wrong.
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In our coverage about Thomas Keeper, the ex-liberal candidate for Calgary Confederation,
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who many of your viewers probably know, he was one of the most infamous candidates that the Liberal
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Party put forward in the last election, and shortly after our coverage of him, he was removed from the
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ballot. We didn't get an exact reason from the Liberal Party, but our coverage went nationally
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viral when we exposed some allegations about him, made by people very close to him, as close as his
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family. So the fact that the government is now investigating me criminally for this coverage,
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Yeah, you know what? I like to think I'm aware of the different ways a journalist can be censored.
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I've been hit with a few of those ways myself, including Elections Canada coming after our
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Libranos campaign. That's five years ago now, four years ago. But I did not know that it was a specific
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offense to talk about conduct that appears to be criminal by a candidate. I just didn't know that
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was on the books. And I'm just going to read a few words from it. I'm quoting from the letter that you
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received from Elections Canada. So I'm just going to read section 91.1 of the Elections Law.
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No person or entity shall, with the intention of affecting the results of an election, and right
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there obviously your intentions were different. Your intentions were journalism. You're not a partisan
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person. Make or publish during the election period a false statement that a candidate, a prospective
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candidate, the leader of a political party, or a public figure associated with a political party, has
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committed an offense under an act of parliament or a regulation made under such an act, or has been
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charged with or is under investigation for such an offense. Now what you did is you revealed a pattern
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of conduct that any right-minded person could say, hey, that looks like it does violate the law.
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And I know you were very meticulous. I remember talking to you about this story when you were
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doing it. You, if I may, were quite concerned that you were being rigorous enough because you had a
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real tiger by the tail. Tell me some of the steps you took to verify the allegations that you ended up
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published. I remember our conversation. Tell our viewers. Yeah. So, I mean, we, this was one of
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those stories where it, it cropped up and, you know, you gotta be, you gotta be really careful when
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you, whether they're running for public office or not, if they're a person of public interest and the
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story is a matter of public interest, you have to be extremely careful because you have their
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reputation in your hands. And, you know, maybe they did something that the public needs to know about
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that. That's just what journalism is, right? And you have to make sure that you're as, as
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rigorous as possible. And that's what we did. We spoke to about a dozen people that knew Thomas
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Keeper intimately, uh, who had, had gone on international trips with the guy who had, uh,
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worked with him in many different capacities. Some people who he worked for, some family members
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who were concerned, uh, you know, without getting into too many details about our sources, who we gave
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anonymity to because we were worried about Thomas Keeper's behavior, uh, and, and whether they would
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be put in personal, uh, risk. Uh, but we did have name sources as well. And we did our, you know,
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if we didn't, if we weren't able to name a source, we, we would have been probably not publishing it
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because it's, it's tough to just publish this kind of thing with anonymous sources. Um, but everyone
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corroborated everything, uh, and it demonstrated this pattern of behavior that we thought was really
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important for the voters of, of Calgary Confederation and Canadians at large to know about what one of
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these candidates who was going to actually become one of Canada's 340 odd board members, uh, the
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liberals won the seat right after he was replaced. So he would have ostensibly become a member of
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parliament, which makes it by definition, a matter of public interest for people to know about him.
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Now, just because he was not charged and convicted in a court of law, it doesn't
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mean that this can't, shouldn't be talked about in a free and democratic society. The police have
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a lot of reasons to not necessarily charge someone. And there might be a lot of reasons
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why someone may have done something and not being convicted of it. Uh, that doesn't mean that the
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public is not allowed to know about it. And that doesn't mean that if someone mentions something that
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is corroborated and sourced and fact-checked and run by lawyers. And, and on top of that,
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we of course went to Thomas keeper to hand him our questions, to make sure that he could say,
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no, that's not true. And here's why you're going to want to correct the record. No,
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he called the police on me and, and lied to the police and said that I assaulted him,
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which adds to this pattern of behavior. Uh, I remember that moment. Cause you know,
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one of the legal defenses against defamation suits is, uh, is a concept in law called responsible
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communication, where if the journalist goes out of their way to reach out to the person they're
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criticized and put this, the prickly questions to the person in advance to give them a chance to
00:24:57.760
respond, that really goes a long way to show the court your true motives or to get the truth.
00:25:03.760
And it's tough if you're, if you've been taking pot shots at a guy for a week to actually go up to
00:25:09.280
him and say, here's the questions I want to ask you. Here's what I mean, that's a, that's a physically and
00:25:14.480
mentally a difficult thing to do. You did it in a way I've never seen anyone do before. You
00:25:20.160
personally hand delivered the questions. We've got that on tape. That was part of your original video.
00:25:26.080
When I saw this, I sort of chuckled because it takes a bit of chutzpah to do it. But I also thought
00:25:31.360
to myself, that's smart because you go right to the guy. You're not sending an email. You're not
00:25:36.960
leaving a voice message. You're saying, I'm Kian Bexte. I'm here doing a story. I want your side in it.
00:25:43.840
Let's roll the tape. I thought this was incredible. Frankly, I've never seen it before. Let's take a look.
00:25:49.600
Mr. Keeper, Thomas. Hi, Thomas. I just have some questions to ask you. We just,
00:25:55.600
we just have some questions to ask you. Hi, Mr. Keeper. Okay, great. Thank you.
00:26:04.960
We just have some questions to ask you. This happens from time to time.
00:26:08.800
I mean, he ran away from you. I think he knew the story was coming. He could have said,
00:26:18.880
here's why. He could have, I don't know, he could have done a lot of things. But obviously,
00:26:23.200
your story was persuasive enough that the Liberal Party didn't run him as the candidate after that. I
00:26:29.600
mean, they seem to be persuaded that something was deeply wrong. Do you think Thomas Keeper himself
00:26:37.280
was the guy who called elections Canada? I mean, I guess that calls for speculation. It seems very
00:26:42.320
punitive that they're going after you. You had a successful journalistic story. The Liberal Party
00:26:47.840
obviously agreed. This feels like vengeance. Yeah. So the whole letter is published at
00:26:54.160
defendjuno.com. And I encourage everyone to go there and read this letter for themselves. And
00:26:59.840
I'm just reading it here. What makes me think that it was Keeper is that the elections commissioner
00:27:05.680
says, quote, the allegations have been denied as being false, which, you know, the allegations were
00:27:12.160
against Thomas Keeper. So the commissioner must have spoken to Keeper before speaking to me, or maybe
00:27:17.200
the Liberal Party denied them as false and maybe they fired him for a different reason. I don't know what
00:27:21.440
their reasoning is, but it's all there in the letter and people can draw their own conclusions.
00:27:25.520
It's worth also noting that we didn't just hand him this letter of questions. We emailed,
00:27:29.120
we did everything normally as well, right? We called, emailed, texted him and his wife as well.
00:27:36.560
Everyone that was available that was relevant to the story, we did the same thing. And he chose not
00:27:41.600
to. And also, interestingly, you know, if this was false, you'd think he would sue us for defamation.
00:27:51.520
Even though we did try to responsibly communicate with him, if it was really that outrageously false
00:27:55.920
that I am now a criminal because of this story, you'd think he would sue in civil court for
00:28:00.720
defamation. But he hasn't sent us so much as a cease and desist letter, let alone a notice of
00:28:05.840
defamation. So why hasn't he done that? Well, the answer is because he knows if assuming it was him
00:28:11.920
that filed this with the election commissioner and not the Liberal Party itself, he knows that it will
00:28:16.240
cost him nothing to do this. And he has no case. But taxpayers will still foot the bill to prosecute
00:28:22.560
a journalist. And at the end of the day, that's all he might want.
00:28:27.920
I want to ask you, because I haven't watched your original story since you aired it,
00:28:33.040
can you just tell us what the essence of the accusations were? Now, don't go any further
00:28:39.440
in your language and you already have gone. But can you just remind me and our viewers,
00:28:44.000
what was it that all his friends and associates had said he did?
00:28:49.360
And just don't embellish not that you would. Just give me a reminder.
00:28:54.560
Yeah, I got to be very careful because like I said, we reviewed, we wanted to be so careful
00:28:59.200
with the story. We had, it was the most fact checking and time I have spent on any one story
00:29:07.920
in my entire career. The story is still up on your website, right?
00:29:10.320
Yeah. Yeah, it is. I encourage everyone to go there and look at it because they'll be able to read
00:29:15.520
the whole thing. And Juneau News and I still stand behind everything that was in there. And
00:29:19.760
if we were led to believe even now at this point that something was wrong, we would correct it.
00:29:23.840
But nothing has indicated that we need to. Basically, it was a pattern of abusive behavior
00:29:29.680
ranging of all different kinds of abuse. And I'll, I mean, you can read from the letter
00:29:35.360
that was sent to me by the elections commissioner. It was specifically, you alleged that he had
00:29:44.720
committed sexual assault and common assault. Now, I had, I don't even know if that letter is true
00:29:51.200
or accurate based off of what we wrote. And I actually don't think that it is. But we did publish
00:29:57.520
a bunch of allegations that were corroborated from others, from people very close to him with primary
00:30:02.800
knowledge of his behavior of him. One example was him dragging his wife off of her high heels at an
00:30:11.360
event to leave the event physically. That, that just gives you a little bit of flavor and it ranges
00:30:16.880
from worse than that to just, just rude verbal assault against women. So there's a, there's a large
00:30:24.880
variety of what we covered in any of that. If it was a conservative, the liberals would be taking out
00:30:30.640
attack ads against the entire party about, and they, you know, now they're, they're trying to put a
00:30:36.160
journalist in jail over it. You know, the liberals very rarely succumb to pressure on these things.
00:30:41.920
They got, they like to brazen it out. They're really experts that just don't say anything,
00:30:47.600
never explain, never apologize, just bluff it out. Trudeau was actually a master at that. And for them
00:30:56.160
to have removed this guy, they must have known that this was only going to be the beginning of a bunch
00:31:01.600
of problems. It sounds like they didn't vet him at all. Well, I really regard this as public interest
00:31:07.680
journalism on your part. And, and you've repeated here some of the extraordinary steps you took to
00:31:13.360
check the facts. And by the way, I think it looks really good on you that you did. And
00:31:18.720
journalistically, and in terms of the trust of your readers and viewers, the fact that will also,
00:31:24.960
in my view, give you a stronger legal defense is about, is a bonus. But that act of responsible
00:31:30.720
communication where you reach out to the other side, that's just plain old good journalism.
00:31:33.920
Anyways. What is this Thomas keeper up to now? Do you know?
00:31:38.880
He's a real estate agent in Calgary. I won't comment on what he's doing specifically besides.
00:31:46.400
No. Well, I mean, that's probably the right place, probably the right place for him. Now you guys are
00:31:50.960
doing a crowdfund to fight back. And you told me your lawyer is a good lawyer. I know him. He's an expert
00:31:56.160
in this stuff. What's the, what's the best website? Is that defend juno.com? Is it?
00:32:03.040
A hundred percent. Yeah. That's where the letter's published and everyone can go there to read
00:32:07.680
the exact wording that the state is using to threaten me with five years in prison and a $50,000
00:32:14.400
fine. And we just want, you know, we're asking people, nothing crazy. We want them to subscribe
00:32:20.400
and join Juno news. I want everyone to support all kinds of independent media in this country,
00:32:26.000
because the larger we are, the more people we have at our back, sharing this news,
00:32:30.880
sharing what's going on and fighting back with the facts, it makes us stronger. It makes us more
00:32:36.720
able to replace the stenographers at state funded organizations. And maybe they won't be able to take
00:32:43.040
so many stabs at us, the larger we get. So if they go to defend juno.com, they can read all the news.
00:32:47.840
They can read the full background on this, that, uh, our lawyer and hear from our lawyer and hear
00:32:53.200
this, uh, see this document for itself. They just, uh, we just ask that they subscribe so that they
00:32:57.760
can support us in the fight, the now legal fight and the other journalism that we do.
00:33:01.600
Yeah. I'm a subscriber, but I will go and chip in a few bucks for the legal defense as well. I,
00:33:08.240
I think this is one of those cases. You probably know the phrase, the Streisand effect. It comes from
00:33:12.880
when Barbara Streisand had a house in Santa Monica and some guy took a picture of it from the
00:33:17.680
beach and like three people watched the, saw the picture, but Barbara Streisand tried to get
00:33:22.400
that taken off the internet. And because of her legal action, hundreds of thousands of people saw
00:33:29.600
the photos that really only a handful of people had seen were it not for her making a fuss.
00:33:34.480
I think that's what's happening here. I think they thought you would cower or they thought you would
00:33:39.600
collapse. Um, I think you're, I mean, look, I'm not an expert in this section of law. From what you say,
00:33:44.880
this is very rarely used. Um, I think you're going to win. And even if you don't win, I don't think
00:33:51.680
the penalty is going to be, God forbid, $50,000. I think, I mean, you never know, but I was convicted
00:33:59.280
for doing some Labrano stuff and they actually gave me a $3,000 fight. So I don't think your life's
00:34:04.560
in jeopardy. I don't think, I think you'll, I think you'll be okay. Especially if viewers and
00:34:10.320
readers chip into your defense fund. What I think will happen is the opposite. That you will
00:34:17.760
bring disrepute upon this section of the law that you will, that you will show Elections Canada
00:34:24.560
to be partisan nitpickers who work for one party and ignore genuine election crises.
00:34:31.760
Exactly. And I think it's going to bring a lot more attention to you and Juneau news. So
00:34:37.200
I don't wish a prosecution on any of my friends, but if I know you and Juneau news,
00:34:42.320
I think you're going to turn lemons into lemonade on this one. And I think they're going to come to
00:34:46.640
regret investigating you. Well, I hope that we can get this law, some, some attention to this law
00:34:52.640
and how undemocratic it is because every journalist in the country, not just me is looking at this,
00:34:58.560
this investigation against me and the damage that it's causing, you know, not just the,
00:35:02.880
not just the cost of this lawyer, which is extensive, obviously it's tens of thousands of dollars,
00:35:07.200
not the nights of sleep that I'm losing over this, but it's the next election and the next story
00:35:13.440
that one journalist might want to cover, but then they might think, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
00:35:17.680
Am I going to be at risk of going to jail if I publish this? And if I don't have the resources
00:35:22.000
of Juneau news or, or rebel, you know, it's so hopefully we can draw some attention to this and get
00:35:26.560
this law fixed because it is undemocratic. It is something you expect to see in North Korea,
00:35:31.040
Iran, Russia, China. Uh, and it doesn't have any, you know, any, it doesn't belong in a democratic
00:35:37.280
country. That's for sure. Well, uh, I'm pleased that, uh, the independent press gallery, and by
00:35:43.120
the way, the president of that this year is our own chief reporter, Sheila Gunn-Reed. I'm pleased that
00:35:48.080
the independent press gallery has put out a statement in support of you and Juneau news.
00:35:52.560
Last I checked, now it could have changed in the last half hour, but last I checked
00:35:56.880
the Canadian journalists for free expression, the Canadian association of journalists, the Canadian
00:36:03.120
civil liberties association and amnesty international and Penn Canada. Last I checked all of those five
00:36:11.440
allegedly pro freedom of speech, pro journalism groups had not said one word, especially.
00:36:18.000
Can you imagine a group called Canadian journalists for free expression, CJFV, like it's literally
00:36:23.680
their name. Key and last word to you. Why are the so-called watchdogs for press freedom actually
00:36:32.160
lapdogs for the liberal government? Why? Well, you know why it's because they're there to protect
00:36:37.520
the liberals. They're there to protect people who take grant money from the government. And, uh,
00:36:42.480
that's, that's their only concern, right? Even the CBC who published a story about this law saying
00:36:49.040
that it w it was going to give a chilling effect to journalists across the country. Now that it's
00:36:53.840
happened, where's their story? Yeah. Well, no, they were worried that it was going to happen to one of
00:36:58.240
their friends. Of course, it never would happen to someone like Rachel Gilmore or one of the,
00:37:02.240
one of the CBC stenographers. It's going to happen to one of us. And it did. And now that it did,
00:37:06.480
well, they're, they're quietly satisfied. Uh, they're, they're looking at this. And if you even
00:37:10.720
look, look on Twitter, I've retweeted a few of these liberals who are saying, good, I hope Key and
00:37:14.800
sees the inside of a prison cell. It's time that people like him see some consequences for what they
00:37:20.320
do. Well, you should take screenshots of that. That's outrageous. Oh, it's unbelievable. And, you know,
00:37:25.920
I, I woke up knowing we were going to publish this today. And I thought, you know, I, I actually
00:37:31.120
think that we have such a case here. This is so outrageous that even liberals are going to
00:37:36.320
say, yeah, this is, this is too much. Right. And I was shocked to see that that's not the case,
00:37:44.240
that, that partisan liberals are deeply satisfied that this is how the law is being executed in this
00:37:49.120
country. Well, I'm going to go and chip in at defendjuno.com. Kian says that's where the letter
00:37:56.720
from the investigator also is. Kian, good luck to you. All the best to you guys over at Juneau. You're
00:38:02.080
doing great these days and, um, keep in touch. Thanks. Will do. Appreciate it.
00:38:07.360
It is Kian Bexty from Juneau news. Stay with us more ahead.
00:38:19.760
Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me on Tommy Robinson's charges, having been formally dropped.
00:38:26.240
Pew Pew with Todd says, Sue them into oblivion. We're talking about the case where Tommy Robinson was walking
00:38:32.000
in a train station in London and some guy saw him and said, I'm going to fight with him and kept
00:38:37.040
threatening Tommy and Tommy kept retreating until finally the guy was so close at the last possible
00:38:42.000
moment. Tommy responded and defend himself. The guy fell down hard and it created a bit of a scene,
00:38:48.720
but Tommy immediately reported the whole thing to police. His lawyers contacted police very quickly.
00:38:55.200
The good news is when police and Tommy and his lawyer finally sat down and watched the surveillance
00:39:00.560
footage. It was so clear. Tommy was in the right and the aggressor was in the wrong. It's just
00:39:06.000
frustrating. It took a month to have that whole process go through. And in the media meantime,
00:39:10.640
the media party made up all sorts of stories about Tommy being the aggressor running away,
00:39:16.320
et cetera. It was typical, gross media party stuff. Mask hysteria says this may be a reaction to the UK
00:39:24.080
government quietly cracking down on the grooming gangs while they're likely to do, uh, to also cover for
00:39:29.120
their own crimes and involvement. It's a de facto admission that Tommy has been correct all along.
00:39:33.840
You know, Tommy was 10 years ahead of everyone on these rape gangs. He's grooming gangs. And I'm glad
00:39:39.440
that the rest of the public is finally catching up, but I do not trust the government to out to look
00:39:44.560
under all the stones because there's a lot of very powerful people who turned a blind eye and frankly,
00:39:49.600
people in the establishment, including police. We know that some police were actually involved
00:39:55.520
in the rape gangs too. Plumbing guy for you says, Tommy's the man. Is he still in danger of being
00:40:01.280
arrested in Canada? Well, I really enjoyed bringing Tommy to Canada last year and it was
00:40:06.960
fun to, you know, actually took him up to Banff. We had one day and I, we went up there was very cloudy,
00:40:11.200
but it was fun to go. Um, he, I don't think he's coming back to Canada because he has a passport issue,
00:40:18.000
but when he was here, he was not charged. He was arrested, but, um, he was let go. I mean,
00:40:22.960
we sort of convinced the police don't get into a Tommy Robinson legal battle that might suit
00:40:29.600
the British government, but it's not of interest to the Canadians. We basically said, Tommy's got
00:40:33.600
a couple of speeches, let him give his speeches and he's gone. And it worked out pretty well in
00:40:37.440
the end. Um, it was a little bit of drama there to have two police cars arrest the guy in Calgary,
00:40:42.560
but he, he was sent free. Well, that's our news and our stories for today until tomorrow.
00:40:47.920
On behalf of all of us here at rebel world headquarters, to you at home, good night