Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ U.K. police arrest comedian over 'mean tweets'

00:00:00.000 Hello my friends, lots of free speech talk today. We'll talk with Kian Bextie, our Rebel News

00:00:04.560 alumnus, who's being investigated by Canada's elections officers for some story he did that

00:00:11.740 was 100% true, by the way, but the liberals didn't like it. So we'll talk to Kian. And also I'll give

00:00:17.480 you my thoughts about the arrest of a British comedian for three mean tweets. I think it's

00:00:24.040 very interesting and I think things are starting to boil over in the UK. That's today's show,

00:00:29.620 but first let me invite you to become a subscriber to what we call Rebel News Plus. It's the video

00:00:34.340 version of this podcast. We have some video clips I want to show you today, so it's a lot better to

00:00:39.040 be able to see the story, not just hear it. And of course the $8 a month, it supports Rebel News and

00:00:44.380 keeps us strong. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com. Tonight, UK police arrest a beloved comedian for

00:00:51.400 making mean tweets. What's going on over there? It's September 2nd and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:59.620 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:13.480 How do you know if you're living in a police state? Most of the time, I think, you don't really know. 0.93

00:01:20.120 It's not like police come up to you all the time and interfere with you all the time.

00:01:25.740 If you keep your head down, if you mind your own business, if you stay indoors, if you keep your

00:01:32.140 thoughts to yourself, you probably had very little interaction with your rulers in any given police

00:01:38.240 state. That is, if you chose to strictly govern yourself, the state wouldn't feel the need to

00:01:44.620 govern you directly. I'm quite sure it was that way in the Soviet Union and even in Nazi Germany if you

00:01:51.520 weren't Jewish. Just keep your head down. I know that's the case because I actually know a fair 1.00

00:01:57.820 number of Russians who left the Soviet Union during the brief period of what they called detente with

00:02:04.540 the West in the late 1970s. These were Russians who were allowed to emigrate to the West. They said

00:02:10.100 they had two ways of talking. The first, when they were in public or when they didn't know the people

00:02:16.640 who they were with very well. It was a defensive way of talking, assuming whatever they said would

00:02:23.200 be reported to a secret policeman. And then there was how they spoke with their absolutely closest and

00:02:29.800 most trustworthy friends and family when they could let their guard down and whisper the truth to each

00:02:34.360 other. I don't know if you could even do that now, though. I mean, think of every electronic device

00:02:40.480 that tracks you and listens to you right now. Imagine trying to go without your phone, which knows

00:02:47.440 your location by GPS. It knows who you were meeting. How would you even arrange a meeting without your

00:02:55.520 phone, without email, without texting? None of that. It would be very difficult to live that life now.

00:03:02.080 But the fear of avoiding the attention of the police was a constant. I had a friend from the Soviet Union named

00:03:08.480 Eugene who came over during Daytona. Maybe I told you this story before. And he went to the University

00:03:13.680 of Calgary when he came over. And I went to U of C as well for my undergrad. And at the University of

00:03:19.760 Calgary, in case you don't know it, it has nice big lawns. And then there's sidewalk paths traversing

00:03:26.000 these lawns. Here's an actual picture of the U of C, one of the lawns. But you know how it is with public

00:03:32.800 lawns and sidewalks. Sometimes it's shorter and quicker to walk on the lawn a little bit

00:03:38.400 rather than walk straight and then make a 90 degree turn. Take a bit of a shortcut.

00:03:43.760 My point is that Eugene told me that he would be walking at University of Calgary with his friends

00:03:49.360 and they would turn to go a certain way, maybe to class or whatever. And they'd walk a little

00:03:53.920 bit on the lawn to get to the next paved sidewalk, but not Eugene. He said he would stay on the sidewalk,

00:04:00.320 even though it was sort of ridiculous, like a robot or something, walking straight and then

00:04:04.080 making a 90 degree turn rather than just cutting the corner like his friends. And he told me,

00:04:10.240 his friend said to him, what on earth are you doing? And he told me he had never really thought

00:04:14.800 about it. But the real answer was, back in the Soviet Union, if you walked on the grass

00:04:21.040 at a place like a university, as opposed to staying strictly on the sidewalk, it was

00:04:26.000 an absolute certainty that some policeman would come up to you, perhaps in a uniform,

00:04:32.800 but just as likely some secret policeman and take your name and write down your details and put it

00:04:38.160 in your file. That's what he said to me. And the fear of tracking the attention of the state was so

00:04:44.640 inculcated into him. It was second nature after, I don't know, he was 20 or 25,

00:04:49.840 that it was, he was programmed, even how he walked. The story is, is pitifully sad,

00:04:56.640 but he told me his friends asking him that was sort of a crisis and epiphany. And he chose at that

00:05:03.280 moment not to live like that anymore. And he would walk on the lawn if he had to, if he wanted to.

00:05:07.600 But what a story about conditioning, to be a prisoner, even if you're not in prison, to be your own prison

00:05:14.080 guard in your own mind. That's what he had become after living in the Soviet Union his whole life. 0.86

00:05:20.720 That's what it was like in the 1970s in the USSR. But the thing about 2025

00:05:27.760 in the United Kingdom is you cannot hide from the secret police. Being alone, being out at night,

00:05:34.480 being with your secret close friends, none of that actually gives you immunity or insulation from

00:05:40.480 today's version of the KGB. I put it to you as far more pervasive than the police states of the past.

00:05:50.400 George Orwell, in his book 1994, predicted many things, including a TV set called a telescreen

00:05:57.680 that listened to you. That was in the book, 1984. He predicted newspeak, truth or lies, freedom and

00:06:04.320 slavery. But he could not imagine the panopticon of the year 2025. Panopticon is an interesting word,

00:06:12.960 isn't it? Sort of it means to see everything. That's literally what it means. That's what Jeremy

00:06:18.640 Bentham, the philosopher, called a circular prison that he designed where prisoners were like in an

00:06:25.360 outer ring and guards were in an inner hub and everyone was under surveillance all the time.

00:06:31.600 Bentham came up with that idea, I don't know, 250 years ago. And hundreds of prisons are actually

00:06:37.360 set up that way. But like I said, there's no need for an actual cop to have eyes on you in an actual

00:06:44.240 jail. Now the machine spies on you, the matrix spies on you. It's called the algorithm. It's called

00:06:51.120 machine learning. That's how it got to know who to target and who not to. It's not even humans doing

00:06:56.480 the censoring these days. I don't think in history there has ever been less privacy than there is now.

00:07:02.640 And good luck living off the grid. Which brings us to the case of Graham Linehan. I'm not exactly sure

00:07:09.440 how to pronounce his name even. I only just learned about him. He's the creator of the British-Irish

00:07:14.720 comedy called Father Ted. Now this morning I watched a whole episode of Father Ted to understand who he

00:07:21.200 was. And let me just say, God bless the British and the Irish, but holy do they ever have a different 1.00

00:07:26.880 sense of humor over there. But they say he's a bit like the Seinfeld of the United Kingdom,

00:07:32.720 just sort of the star comedian who created this great sitcom. That's what they say. Father Ted was

00:07:40.320 popular for a while, but Graham Linehan, or Glynner as the Brits call him online, he's gotten a bit

00:07:47.040 political in his old age. Like J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, he has started

00:07:52.160 to speak out against transgenderism, just like J.K. Rowling. He tweets about it a lot. In fact,

00:07:58.800 if you scroll down his Twitter feed, frankly, he's deeply motivated by it. He thinks about it a lot.

00:08:06.640 And it looks like he's in some litigation about it too. His pinned tweet from a few days ago,

00:08:11.920 um, don't forget next week on Thursday and Friday, 4th and 5th, when I'll be on trial in the UK

00:08:18.960 for crossing a trans activist and his willing goons from the Metropolitan Police.

00:08:24.800 Do come along to say hello. Well, little did he know he was in America coming home for that court

00:08:31.920 battle that the police would pick him up, five police, and apparently they were armed, which is

00:08:36.800 not normal in the UK. And they held him and they grilled him for hours and they charged him with

00:08:43.760 illegal tweeting. That's the thing, I guess. Here's a post by Sir Toby Young of the Free Speech Union,

00:08:52.320 who said Glynner was arrested under suspicion of having committed an offense under Section 3A

00:08:58.000 of the Public Order Act. Section 3A says, quote, a person who distributes or shows or plays a recording

00:09:04.880 of visual images or sounds which are threatening. He's guilty of an offense if he intends thereby

00:09:11.280 to stir up religious hatred or hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation. Glynner cannot possibly be

00:09:18.160 guilty of this offense since it makes no reference to transgender status. And all three of the tweets

00:09:23.680 the police questioned him about referred to trans rights activists. And then he concluded,

00:09:29.360 for that reason, there is zero chance of the Crown Prosecution Service bringing a case against Glynner.

00:09:36.480 Well, far be it for me to disagree with an expert like Sir Toby, but maybe it's not actually about

00:09:44.000 securing a conviction. Maybe charging him is about terrorizing people into silence, including him

00:09:50.560 himself, but more about others. Maybe it's about shaming Glynner or showing that they're, you know,

00:09:57.760 no matter how powerful or popular they are, no one is safe if you transgress transgenderism. That 0.98

00:10:04.320 there's always someone listening to them, that their words are now crimes. And even though real crimes go

00:10:10.560 unpunished in the UK, your thought crimes won't. Maybe it's not about the law at all.

00:10:15.520 The whole thing was so stressful, by the way, the doctors had to be called for his incarceration.

00:10:21.040 They were worried he was going to have a stroke. That's what that picture is about.

00:10:25.200 So what were the tweets that he tweeted? Well, for one thing, thousands of people have since retweeted,

00:10:30.720 reposted those comments, giving them far more viewership than had police not arrested him.

00:10:37.520 I'll read them. The first says, if a trans identified male is in a female only space,

00:10:45.280 he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the police. And if all else fails,

00:10:50.800 punch him in the balls. It's advice for women and girls who discover a man in a women's private 1.00

00:10:57.680 place like a bathroom. There's an obvious joke to be made here. The police would probably insist that you

00:11:04.560 say, punch her in the balls. Her. But you have to go through that sort of trutherism, don't you? 1.00

00:11:10.640 You have to use their made up names and say her and say ma'am. Here's another tweet that says,

00:11:17.520 a photo you can smell. I don't know what he's getting at or who he's getting at. But again,

00:11:22.880 it's probably rude. But so what? This is the UK. You're allowed to be rude. And then the last one,

00:11:30.160 he says, I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F them. Again, probably rude. Let's agree it's 1.00

00:11:36.720 rude. But, but so what? That's a crime. Five armed police pull you over and grill you.

00:11:43.920 Now these, all, all three of these posts were from months ago. And Linehan just came back from America.

00:11:50.880 Not sure if he wrote those tweets when he was in America, but he was writing them on an American social

00:11:55.920 media platform. And now he's been arrested in London for writing on an American website. And

00:12:02.480 the police refused to bail him unless he promised to stop posting on Twitter or X, as it's now called.

00:12:10.640 Do they have the power to do that? Can, can any pro transgender cop arrest someone who is rude 0.85

00:12:16.720 towards trans people and say, stop tweeting or you'll stay in jail?

00:12:20.400 Well, of course. And that's why I disagree with my friend Sir Toby is that it may not be lawful,

00:12:27.680 but it works. Hey, didn't Donald Trump and JD Vance specifically ask the UK prime minister,

00:12:33.360 Keir Starmer about all this? Not about Linehan's case, obviously, but about censorship in general.

00:12:38.560 Yeah. Look, I said what I said, which is that we do have, of course, a special relationship with our

00:12:44.640 friends in the UK and also with some of our European allies. But we also know that there have been

00:12:49.360 infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British, of course, what the British

00:12:55.680 do in their own country is up to them, but also affect American technology companies and by extension,

00:13:00.640 American citizens. So that is something that we'll talk about today at lunch.

00:13:04.240 We've had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom, and it will last for a very,

00:13:10.000 very long time. Well, no, I mean, certainly we wouldn't want to reach across US citizens, 0.79

00:13:15.200 and we don't. And that's absolutely right. But in relation to free speech in the UK,

00:13:19.360 I'm very proud of our history there. Yeah, it hasn't stopped, has it? In fact,

00:13:23.120 I think it's gotten worse. You know, over the weekend, a British woman was arrested for flying

00:13:27.600 a flag. Seriously, not a Palestinian flag, a British flag. They're putting up union flags. 0.94

00:13:33.680 That's the multicolored British flag. And they're putting up English flags. And I've seen Scottish flags

00:13:38.960 flags go up. It's a sign of national pride and rejecting mass immigration. 30 arrests a day for 0.71

00:13:45.600 that sort of thing. 30 arrests for social media posts a day in the UK. If you told me that Russia 0.99

00:13:51.760 or Iran was arresting 30 people a day for wrong think online, I would tell you, I honestly think

00:13:57.120 you're exaggerating, unless perhaps there's a big crackdown going on 30 a day. No, that is the average

00:14:02.800 now in the UK. There's been widespread chatter about this case because Glynner is a TV guy, a comedy guy,

00:14:09.520 a popular guy. Not quite Seinfeld, I don't think, but something like that. And I think a lot of Brits

00:14:14.480 have had it with trans. Even their own high court ruled there are just two sexes. But who cares what 1.00

00:14:21.360 the courts say? And who cares if the police exceeded their powers? As Sir Toby Young alleges,

00:14:27.680 the point is to demoralize, to harass, to show who's boss, to warn, to deter, to deter others.

00:14:36.400 And if you have to have a few show trials, so be it. The Brits are getting unhappily good at having

00:14:43.440 those. But I'm seeing something more and more. Brits outright asking America for help. Here,

00:14:49.520 look at this clip from the biggest news network in the UK, GB News. Watch for a few minutes.

00:14:53.920 Listen, Elon Musk has just tweeted to say that he believes that we're living in a police state.

00:15:00.080 The Graham story, obviously, is a semi-active case now. We have to be a little careful about what we

00:15:04.240 say about that. And I'd be interested to hear how the debate goes there on that issue. But yeah,

00:15:09.280 free speech is massive here. If you could pick an issue that the American government and the British

00:15:14.800 government are poles apart on, it is that. We've heard J.D. Vance, the vice president,

00:15:20.720 talking about the fact that he worries for the UK. And that is an issue that I'm going to be raising

00:15:25.920 every single time I can here at the White House. I did similar in Scotland. You might remember when

00:15:31.280 Donald Trump came over. I talked about free speech with Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump. It's a

00:15:36.400 massive issue here. And I'm glad we're keeping that conversation alive. Elon Musk is doing some

00:15:41.280 heavy duty tweeting about it, too. That makes things go viral. Hundreds of millions of views. But Elon

00:15:46.640 Musk is American, so he can love free speech in the First Amendment. The problem is the UK, isn't it?

00:15:52.880 And for the Brits themselves, the journalists, the activists, the politicians,

00:15:57.200 for them to say they're leaning on the US, they're hoping for help from the US,

00:16:01.520 that's actually a pretty extraordinary thing. In one way, it's quite sad.

00:16:05.760 It suggests the UK can't fix its own problems. But in another way, whatever it takes to regain

00:16:11.040 freedom, right? I mean, that's how I'm starting to feel about Canada. I don't want foreigners to 1.00

00:16:15.680 solve our problems. But maybe we need a little bit of help. I mean, the greatest free speech

00:16:22.400 champion for our country is probably not in our country. I think something's gonna break. I think

00:16:30.320 Trump might start to feel like he's being lied to by Keir Starmer about the UK's dedication to

00:16:35.280 freedom. And who knows, if Trump feels lied to, he might just do something like slap a country

00:16:40.720 with a big tariff. I mean, who knows? But I do know something, the UK is waking up and rising up,

00:16:46.080 massive street protests against migrant hotels, massive waves of people, normal people, mums even,

00:16:52.720 protesting against the government, people who have never protested before. And on September 13th,

00:16:58.400 less than two weeks from now, the largest free speech rally in UK history led by our friend Tommy

00:17:03.760 Robinson. And can you believe it? I'll be speaking at it. That'll be a momentous day and hopefully one

00:17:09.600 that helps set the UK free. Stay with us for more about freedom of speech here in Canada.

00:17:23.920 Over the last year, we've seen a massive potential for foreign election interference. I'm not just

00:17:30.880 talking about the general election. I'm talking about the all online leadership selection process

00:17:37.280 for the Liberal Party of Canada. More votes were discarded, more votes were rejected

00:17:43.840 by Liberal Party members than were accepted. And there was never an explanation. How did a quarter

00:17:49.360 of a million liberals get disenfranchised? And how was it that in a statistical impossibility,

00:17:58.000 the winner, Mark Carney, got plus or minus 5%, the identical result in all 338 districts in the country,

00:18:06.800 even winning implausibly in the home ridings of his opponents? Are you telling me that Christia

00:18:13.520 Freeland, after a decade of representing the university district of University of Toronto,

00:18:19.360 lost by the same majority, same proportion as every other district in the country? It was just

00:18:25.120 implausible. That whole thing was completely uninteresting to Elections Canada, just as the 11 0.94

00:18:32.400 Chinese agents interfering with the last federal election were completely uninteresting to Elections

00:18:38.240 Canada. I tell you all this because I think I've discovered where their investigators have been.

00:18:45.760 They've been investigating citizen journalists, including our friend Kian Bextie, an alumnus of

00:18:52.720 Rebel News, who is now with Juno News, who joins us now from Alberta. Kian, great to see you again.

00:18:59.120 Why don't you tell our viewers? I don't think this is going to shock our viewers because our viewers

00:19:03.440 are ready for the worst. Tell us what Elections Canada wrote to you a couple of weeks ago.

00:19:10.080 What are they threatening you with? What are they accusing you of?

00:19:14.400 Yeah, so they're accusing me of violating some arcane law that has not been used against anyone

00:19:21.920 other than me that we can tell, that basically says you're not allowed to lie about a candidate

00:19:28.560 going into public office, about them breaking the law in some other capacity, which is not what we

00:19:34.880 did, obviously. We reported the news during election period that we believed at the time,

00:19:40.560 and still do, to be 100% accurate. There's nothing that leads us to believe we were wrong.

00:19:45.680 In our coverage about Thomas Keeper, the ex-liberal candidate for Calgary Confederation,

00:19:50.320 who many of your viewers probably know, he was one of the most infamous candidates that the Liberal

00:19:56.880 Party put forward in the last election, and shortly after our coverage of him, he was removed from the

00:20:02.480 ballot. We didn't get an exact reason from the Liberal Party, but our coverage went nationally

00:20:08.240 viral when we exposed some allegations about him, made by people very close to him, as close as his

00:20:17.120 family. So the fact that the government is now investigating me criminally for this coverage,

00:20:24.000 it's... I'm in disbelief.

00:20:27.120 Yeah, you know what? I like to think I'm aware of the different ways a journalist can be censored.

00:20:32.320 I've been hit with a few of those ways myself, including Elections Canada coming after our

00:20:37.040 Libranos campaign. That's five years ago now, four years ago. But I did not know that it was a specific

00:20:44.160 offense to talk about conduct that appears to be criminal by a candidate. I just didn't know that

00:20:53.760 was on the books. And I'm just going to read a few words from it. I'm quoting from the letter that you

00:21:00.800 received from Elections Canada. So I'm just going to read section 91.1 of the Elections Law.

00:21:07.120 No person or entity shall, with the intention of affecting the results of an election, and right

00:21:13.200 there obviously your intentions were different. Your intentions were journalism. You're not a partisan

00:21:17.840 person. Make or publish during the election period a false statement that a candidate, a prospective

00:21:24.400 candidate, the leader of a political party, or a public figure associated with a political party, has

00:21:29.760 committed an offense under an act of parliament or a regulation made under such an act, or has been

00:21:35.120 charged with or is under investigation for such an offense. Now what you did is you revealed a pattern

00:21:41.680 of conduct that any right-minded person could say, hey, that looks like it does violate the law.

00:21:50.720 And I know you were very meticulous. I remember talking to you about this story when you were

00:21:54.240 doing it. You, if I may, were quite concerned that you were being rigorous enough because you had a

00:22:01.360 real tiger by the tail. Tell me some of the steps you took to verify the allegations that you ended up

00:22:09.040 published. I remember our conversation. Tell our viewers. Yeah. So, I mean, we, this was one of

00:22:13.920 those stories where it, it cropped up and, you know, you gotta be, you gotta be really careful when

00:22:19.360 you, whether they're running for public office or not, if they're a person of public interest and the

00:22:23.920 story is a matter of public interest, you have to be extremely careful because you have their

00:22:27.840 reputation in your hands. And, you know, maybe they did something that the public needs to know about

00:22:31.840 that. That's just what journalism is, right? And you have to make sure that you're as, as

00:22:35.520 rigorous as possible. And that's what we did. We spoke to about a dozen people that knew Thomas

00:22:41.520 Keeper intimately, uh, who had, had gone on international trips with the guy who had, uh,

00:22:49.680 worked with him in many different capacities. Some people who he worked for, some family members

00:22:56.320 who were concerned, uh, you know, without getting into too many details about our sources, who we gave

00:23:01.920 anonymity to because we were worried about Thomas Keeper's behavior, uh, and, and whether they would

00:23:07.120 be put in personal, uh, risk. Uh, but we did have name sources as well. And we did our, you know,

00:23:14.320 if we didn't, if we weren't able to name a source, we, we would have been probably not publishing it

00:23:18.640 because it's, it's tough to just publish this kind of thing with anonymous sources. Um, but everyone

00:23:24.240 corroborated everything, uh, and it demonstrated this pattern of behavior that we thought was really

00:23:30.960 important for the voters of, of Calgary Confederation and Canadians at large to know about what one of

00:23:37.120 these candidates who was going to actually become one of Canada's 340 odd board members, uh, the

00:23:43.520 liberals won the seat right after he was replaced. So he would have ostensibly become a member of

00:23:48.240 parliament, which makes it by definition, a matter of public interest for people to know about him.

00:23:54.000 Now, just because he was not charged and convicted in a court of law, it doesn't

00:23:57.840 mean that this can't, shouldn't be talked about in a free and democratic society. The police have

00:24:03.040 a lot of reasons to not necessarily charge someone. And there might be a lot of reasons

00:24:06.800 why someone may have done something and not being convicted of it. Uh, that doesn't mean that the

00:24:11.920 public is not allowed to know about it. And that doesn't mean that if someone mentions something that

00:24:16.720 is corroborated and sourced and fact-checked and run by lawyers. And, and on top of that,

00:24:21.760 we of course went to Thomas keeper to hand him our questions, to make sure that he could say,

00:24:26.240 no, that's not true. And here's why you're going to want to correct the record. No,

00:24:29.920 he called the police on me and, and lied to the police and said that I assaulted him,

00:24:33.440 which adds to this pattern of behavior. Uh, I remember that moment. Cause you know,

00:24:39.280 one of the legal defenses against defamation suits is, uh, is a concept in law called responsible

00:24:46.480 communication, where if the journalist goes out of their way to reach out to the person they're

00:24:51.440 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 1.00

00:33:22.400 that taken off the internet. And because of her legal action, hundreds of thousands of people saw 0.71

00:33:29.600 the photos that really only a handful of people had seen were it not for her making a fuss. 0.97

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.

00:34:30.480 Like what I was talking about earlier.

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, 1.00

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

00:40:51.840 and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - September 02, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ U.K. police arrest comedian over 'mean tweets'

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript