Rebel News Podcast

00:00:00.000 Hey, today I'm in the United Kingdom covering Tommy Robinson's final fateful trial for contempt

00:00:06.580 of court. If he loses, he'll be back in prison most likely. So tune in. Hey, before you go,

00:00:12.380 can you subscribe to become a premium member? You get the video version of this podcast. Normally

00:00:17.020 it's $8 a month. It's $80 a year. But if you type in the coupon code podcast, you get a nice

00:00:22.340 discount. So you can do that at the rebel.media slash shows. All right, here's my special show

00:00:28.880 from London on Tommy Robinson. You're listening to a Rebel Media Podcast. Tonight, Tommy Robinson

00:00:35.920 is back on trial yet again and risks prison for reporting on a rape game. Will the UK's

00:00:41.680 most persistent critic finally be silenced? It's the 4th of July and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:49.640 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know? There's 8,500 customers

00:00:55.200 here and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the government

00:00:59.440 about why I'm publishing it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:01:08.700 It's the 4th of July or as the Americans call it Independence Day. That's the day the United

00:01:14.560 States, the 13 colonies formally declared themselves independent of the United Kingdom and laid out

00:01:20.440 their case for why. It was because they were governed, they argued, by an increasingly tyrannical

00:01:26.760 Great Britain. They claimed that the government they had once loved had become a tyranny, had undone the

00:01:32.120 traditions of liberty and basic rights. It's really an amazing document. It's history, it's literature,

00:01:37.700 it's a political manifesto, it's a restatement of liberty. Can I read a couple of sentences from the

00:01:42.860 Declaration of Independence? We Canadians probably don't read it enough. It's that true American spirit.

00:01:47.520 I wish we had a bit more of that spirit up here in Canada. And you'll see why I'm reading this today,

00:01:51.620 not just because it's the 4th of July for our American friends, but because there is now a trial

00:01:55.960 underway today in the United Kingdom itself about Tommy Robinson in its great and ancient capital,

00:02:00.980 London, that I believe is an echo of the tyranny outlined in this declaration almost 250 years ago.

00:02:07.380 Let me read a little bit. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people

00:02:13.820 to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers

00:02:19.320 of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God

00:02:23.960 entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the

00:02:29.940 causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are

00:02:37.540 created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among

00:02:42.860 them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I'll stop there. So it's a declaration of independence,

00:02:48.360 not a declaration of war. They wanted to dissolve their ties with the UK, a divorce really, because

00:02:53.760 they were free men, they said. That's the second part, right? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

00:02:59.620 I spent too much time today poking around reading through that document and a dozen things related to it

00:03:04.180 because here we are in 2019 on Independence Day, and I see a man named Tommy Robinson who is on trial

00:03:10.720 for being a journalist for reporting from outside the Leeds County Court last May. Let me read you

00:03:15.640 just two more lines from the Declaration of Independence. Maybe they'd apply to Tommy.

00:03:20.600 The Declaration of Independence has a list of grievances, like an indictment, like a prosecutor's

00:03:25.380 case. Remember, they're making the case for separating from the UK. Let me read a little bit.

00:03:29.380 For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury. I think that applies here. More

00:03:37.960 in a moment on that. Here's more. For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws,

00:03:44.200 and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments. I think that applies to Tommy.

00:03:49.220 More on that in a moment. Let me read one more line. In every stage of these oppressions,

00:03:53.220 we have petitioned for redress. In the most humble terms, our repeated petitions have been answered

00:03:58.360 only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a

00:04:04.160 tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Boy, that's good. Yeah, so really, what's changed

00:04:11.760 in the UK since 1776? So Tommy Robinson was standing outside the court in Leeds, UK, where a huge rape

00:04:18.460 gang was on trial inside for raping dozens of British girls as young as 11. Raping them again and again

00:04:24.660 every night, by the way. Dozens of men working together as a swarm. The trial was over. It was

00:04:30.740 now judgment day for the accused rapist. The jury would reveal their verdict. Tommy was outside the

00:04:35.540 courthouse. He had not gone in to the trial itself. He was talking in general terms about rape gangs and

00:04:41.900 about how little the government had done about them and how politically correct the media was and how

00:04:45.760 it's a real problem. He was careful to call the rapists that day accused rapists, for they were

00:04:50.720 technically not yet guilty, at least not for a few more minutes until the verdict was handed out.

00:04:56.440 He was careful not to step physically onto the court property and, in fact, asked an officer several

00:05:01.140 times. He had gone into the court to ask officers in the court advice on what reporting restrictions,

00:05:06.460 if any, that there were. And the court officers admit they did not tell him anything and, frankly,

00:05:11.040 they themselves did not know. It was really banal. It was unremarkable, except that they hate Tommy

00:05:17.980 Robinson over there. And by they, I mean the establishment of all sorts. I suppose the only

00:05:21.500 other thing I ought to mention is that when the accused rapists were showing up to court where

00:05:26.420 they would be convicted and thus be called convicted rapists, not just alleged rapists, pedophiles to

00:05:31.900 be precise, Tommy asked them how they were feeling about their chances. Here, watch a bit. I want you

00:05:36.020 to see this. So really nothing more than Tommy himself is scrummed with by reporters when he

00:06:03.540 himself shows up for court. Tommy asked the rapists precisely the same thing he's asked. In fact,

00:06:28.160 he's asked those questions by the British media in a more accusatory way. I've never seen the UK

00:06:33.020 media do anything as dainty as calling Tommy accused. They have long ago convicted him of

00:06:38.280 hate crimes, even though he's ever been convicted, let alone tried or charged for a hate crime. So,

00:06:43.820 as you know, that day in May of last year in Leeds, Tommy was arrested by a swarm of seven police,

00:06:51.140 taken to the police station, then brought to the judge, where he was tried in less than 10 minutes.

00:06:55.540 So obviously the judge did not even review the 75-minute live stream that Tommy had broadcast.

00:07:00.480 Tommy himself did not say a word in that trial. He did not plead guilty or otherwise accede to his

00:07:06.160 sentence. He did not have the meaningful right to a lawyer. The public defender he was assigned

00:07:10.100 had no experience with contempt of court, which is a technical and obscure area of the law. The

00:07:14.760 public defender did not have Tommy's legal history in front of him, including a previous contempt of

00:07:19.160 court case in Canterbury. It was a drumhead trial, 10 minutes, finished before lunch,

00:07:24.440 because why waste time as lunch? And Tommy was immediately shipped off to prison. Tommy asked

00:07:29.760 the rapists if they were going to prison. Three hours after that, he himself was taken to prison

00:07:35.040 with a 13-month sentence, the first journalist to be in prison for contempt of court since the 1940s in

00:07:40.880 the UK. A comfortable enough prison, but then without explanation or warning, he was moved to one of

00:07:46.680 the most dangerous prisons in the UK that was actually run by the Muslim gangs therein.

00:07:51.860 Here's part of an interview I did with Tommy shortly after he got out.

00:07:55.320 I had threats every day. You know this heat that we've had here? I couldn't have my cell windows open

00:08:00.520 because they would be spat through or shit put through. Oh my God. And so I had my windows shut

00:08:06.560 all the time. And then at the same time as that, I had just threats from everywhere. And then at the

00:08:11.520 same time as that, I had the police visiting my mother and my wife to tell them that there's

00:08:14.600 intelligence, there's going to be acid attacks on them. It was dangerous. So they threw him in

00:08:19.680 solitary confinement for his own good for more than two months. That's illegal, by the way.

00:08:24.440 And he was threatened with death by the Muslim prison gang. And the Muslim prison gang made his

00:08:28.460 food for that solitary cell. So he couldn't eat it. He just had to eat a piece of fruit in the can of

00:08:33.220 tuna a day. Every prisoner comes out, you walk into a kitchen canteen and you see the person

00:08:39.100 handed you dinner. But it's prisoners, which are Muslims. But I didn't even get to see so that I could

00:08:44.780 see what they've done to order food. My dinner was brought to me on a plate and handed to me at my

00:08:49.600 door. And who knows what happened? And then I've got them telling me, how was your dinner, Tommy?

00:08:54.020 Oh, yeah. So they want to know. And it's easy to get anything smuggled. And so, yeah. So essentially,

00:09:00.180 but then the prison knew this. And I put in, I've got a copy of everything. I put in complaint

00:09:06.060 after complaint saying, look, all you need to do, because I could only spend 12 pound a week.

00:09:10.060 And that 12 pound a week bought me five tins of tuna. So basically what I've ate is a tin of tuna a day

00:09:14.600 I'm free. It was the dictionary definition of torture. As you know, we here at the rebel

00:09:19.280 crowdfunded the cost of his legal appeal. And the court of appeal itself in a unanimous ruling

00:09:24.100 released him from prison. Tore a strip off the judge in the prison system itself and quashed his

00:09:29.980 conviction. Absolute vindication, though not a word of it published by the British Media Party. And

00:09:34.480 the attorney general of the United Kingdom under an allegedly conservative government has chosen

00:09:40.120 to prosecute Tommy once again for that same day back in Leeds more than a year ago. To be clear,

00:09:46.400 the rape trial was not endangered. It couldn't have been. The trial was over. The jury was done

00:09:52.340 deliberating. They were about to reveal their verdict. One of the men appealed their conviction,

00:09:57.260 a long shot appeal, saying, well, Tommy's broadcast had an impact in this conviction. The high court judge

00:10:02.600 threw that out as a laughably false desperation bid. So it is a fact. He literally did not disturb the

00:10:09.840 trial. That is a matter of fact. That is a matter of law. And he already falsely served 10 weeks in

00:10:14.800 prison. So why is he being prosecuted again for the same thing? Well, that is what's so insane.

00:10:19.960 They can't say that he upset or could upset the trial. It's over. He didn't. They noted that he

00:10:25.520 tried to comply with all the rules. He checked with the police. He checked with the court officers.

00:10:29.120 Am I okay to stand here? So what exactly did he do wrong? Why are they prosecuting him again? They are

00:10:32.980 literally arguing, look at this, that he caused distress to those rapists on their way into the

00:10:40.180 court. I'm not kidding. They're prosecuting him for that. Again, I kid you not. Hey, how about taking

00:10:44.820 some of the millions of dollars used to police Tommy's speech and spend that cracking down on the

00:10:49.500 rape gangs themselves? If you want to shut Tommy up about rape gangs going after British children,

00:10:55.520 it's probably the easiest way to do it. Stop the rape gangs going after British children. Then

00:10:59.460 Tommy will shut up. So he's back on trial today. And I have been reliably informed that it's the

00:11:05.880 real deal. It's the big one. I've been going over there for little skirmishes in court over procedural

00:11:10.160 matters. For example, at the old Bailey last time, the judge, two times ago, the most senior criminal

00:11:16.600 judge in the UK called the Recorder of London. That's an ancient title. The Recorder of London said

00:11:22.140 it was a controversial and complicated enough matter that the attorney general would have to decide to

00:11:27.520 proceed with the prosecution. And the judge threw it back to the politicians. I thought that was wise.

00:11:31.840 And I thought the politicians would be wise to let sleeping dogs lie. Tommy already served more

00:11:36.380 prison time than many violent criminals do for the thought crime of reporting. But now it's actually

00:11:41.800 going back. It's on. The substantive hearing will proceed today. They really are going to do this.

00:11:47.940 Two days have been set aside for the meet of the hearing. If he's found in contempt, he could be sent

00:11:52.760 back to prison, possibly even for the duration of the 13-month sentence given to him in Leeds. By the

00:11:58.120 way, if that happens, I do believe he'll likely be killed in there. You saw how thin he was when

00:12:04.540 they let him out of prison. He lost 40 pounds, three stone, as they say in the UK, in 10 weeks.

00:12:09.860 He was half mad, PTSD, shell shock, a version of it, locked in a box for 23 and a half hours a day,

00:12:15.460 only let out to be screamed at by Muslim gangs threatening to kill him. He'd go mad if he's not

00:12:20.640 poisoned or stabbed first. And I think the UK government and Theresa May would be just fine

00:12:24.980 with that. So I'm recording this commentary right now in Toronto. And then I'm about to hop on a

00:12:30.240 plane with this pre-recorded and hopefully I won't be stopped at the border as some leftist British

00:12:34.660 journalists have demanded what happened to me. It is a fact that the British media is uniformly

00:12:38.920 against Tommy. And so now they are uniformly against me too for reporting with some sympathy and

00:12:44.820 accuracy on his case. The British media, especially the BBC, has three times complained about

00:12:50.640 my coverage. Once to the actual Metropolitan Police of London. I'm not making that up. Once

00:12:55.580 to the recorder of London himself. And once, last time, they actually interrupted the trial.

00:13:01.800 They stopped the trial. The media did. They passed a note to a clerk who passed it to the judge mid-trial

00:13:07.580 to complain that I was live-tweeting from the court as I had permission to do.

00:13:13.200 They're mad over there, the media. And they have complete silence, completely silenced Tommy himself.

00:13:18.580 They kicked him off all the social media. Where Tommy used to have one million Facebook followers.

00:13:22.600 He had nearly a million followers on Twitter. So now he's voiceless. So they want to come for

00:13:26.560 us here, the rebel too. We'll see how that goes. So we'll see if you, so I'm going to the UK. I

00:13:32.140 recorded this in Toronto, getting on a plane, going to the UK. So we'll see if you want to help cover

00:13:37.940 the cost of my flight and hotel. Please do. Go to realreporters.uk. I'm also crowdfunding the

00:13:46.040 costs for three other reporters. Our own Jessica S., of course. She did a great job covering Tommy's

00:13:52.800 political campaign in May. So she's coming over to cover the trial too. And so is our friend Andrew

00:13:57.760 Lawton, who did a great job the first time. Remember this?

00:14:01.400 Before the proceeding even started, this is what they said about Tommy. Quote, he is in

00:14:07.440 contempt of court. There's not really any doubt. And there was one more. You see, one of the

00:14:17.920 great members of the law enforcement, who have done a lot of great work today, said to them

00:14:22.460 at the time, there were about 1,500 people. They said, let's just say a few hundred. Quote, because

00:14:31.220 we don't want to give it credit.

00:14:40.500 This is why I got on a plane to come here to cover the facts. That's why I'm here. Thank you.

00:14:47.900 Yeah, he's coming. And we're paying for some of his costs. And of course, the thunder from down

00:14:53.880 under, Avi Yamini. We're covering his flight all the way from Melbourne, Australia. So between my

00:14:59.260 flight and hotel and Jessica's and Andrew and Avi, that's about $7,000 or $8,000. Let's call it

00:15:06.240 4,000 to 5,000 pounds. If you can help, I'd be grateful. Just go to realreporters.uk. All right.

00:15:12.480 That's it from Canada. I pre-recorded this before I flew. Let's see if I can actually

00:15:18.800 give you an on-the-scene update from the courthouse itself.

00:15:35.460 For the Rebel.media, I'm Ezra Levant. Behind me, even though it's almost 5 p.m. here in London,

00:15:40.200 are hundreds of Tommy Robinson supporters who have been here all day. The crowd at its height

00:15:44.840 was closer to about 3,000. I'd say there's probably 300 there now. There's some speeches

00:15:51.100 that you can hear, some cheering. Some very interesting remarks on the stage earlier today.

00:15:56.020 A former child victim of these rape gangs, very brave of her to talk about it. And a former

00:16:01.300 police officer who was very decorated, received an award at 10 Downing Street herself, spoke

00:16:07.300 about how the police have been instructed to turn a blind eye to these rape gangs. So

00:16:11.180 that's what's going on behind me. But what happened inside the court was even more interesting

00:16:15.820 to me. As you know, the events that are on trial happened 14 months ago, in May of 2018,

00:16:22.660 up in Leeds. And it was about a rape gang trial up there. Now, generally, contempt of court

00:16:28.880 is when you risk disrupting a trial and maybe having a trial thrown out because of misconduct.

00:16:36.600 Obviously, with the passage of 14 months' time, we now see, as a matter of fact, that the trial,

00:16:42.260 in fact, was not disrupted, that it was a successful trial, that the men were convicted, and that

00:16:47.400 any appeals were dashed. So it is simply a matter of fact, as well as a matter of law, that Tommy

00:16:53.080 Robinson did not disrupt that trial 14 months ago. Yet he did serve 10 weeks in solitary confinement

00:16:59.900 for it, a prison term that was thrown out by the Court of Appeal. So given that the man

00:17:05.360 already served 10 weeks in solitary, which is illegal in itself, by the way, and given

00:17:10.180 that the prosecution was false and the imprisonment was wrong, why are we here again, 14 months

00:17:15.660 later? And you know I've been coming back to the UK so often. This has got to be my, I don't

00:17:19.460 know, I've lost count, seven, eight times on this matter. Why? Why has the UK government

00:17:25.100 spent surely a million pounds on prosecution? And if you see the dozens and dozens of police

00:17:30.860 and fancy police trucks, and there was a police helicopter, that's got to be a million pounds

00:17:35.760 too. Why is the government spending millions of pounds policing and prosecuting Tommy for

00:17:44.140 a contempt of court that never happened? Well the answer is obvious. It's to turn the

00:17:49.780 process into the punishment, to get Tommy by any way necessary. I mean how do they wind

00:17:53.900 up getting Al Capone? They got him on mail fraud or something. So I think that's the strategy

00:17:59.520 that Tommy's political enemies in the government are taking. They can't get him on anything substantive

00:18:04.460 so they're trying to trump up a fake contempt of court application into a major thing just

00:18:10.620 to waste his time and money. I don't think they're succeeding. The large crowds earlier

00:18:14.880 today would suggest that if anything Tommy's following is growing. But let me end with my

00:18:21.220 observation of what's going on. Now I'm not a British lawyer. I went to law school in Canada.

00:18:26.680 I haven't practiced law in a decade. But I know enough to know that the prosecution, before

00:18:32.260 they prosecute anyone, they have to have two tests. One is, is this prosecution in the public

00:18:39.020 interest? Does justice require it? Is the world not right if the prosecution isn't done? That's

00:18:46.320 clearly not the case here. There's no public interest in this prosecution, especially since

00:18:49.840 Tommy was already wrongly imprisoned. The second and maybe more practical test is, is there

00:18:55.440 a reasonable likelihood of conviction? That is, in Latin, de minimis non curat lex. The law

00:19:04.120 doesn't care about trivialities. You don't, I guess that's both public interest and do you sue?

00:19:11.420 If there was a trifle, if someone's going 51 in a 50 kilometer an hour zone, you don't sue

00:19:16.760 them. It's not in the public interest and you might not even be able to convict. Tommy's conduct

00:19:21.880 at that court was so minor. There's no public interest in prosecuting and what's the likelihood

00:19:27.740 of conviction? And let me tell you what I mean by that. In the court, the Attorney General,

00:19:32.240 because he could not argue that Tommy disrupted the case, was grasping at straws. He was scraping

00:19:38.620 the bottom of the barrel for anything, anything. And one of the main things he said was, when

00:19:43.400 you asked questions of the rapists as they went into trial, you were mean. And he played

00:19:49.240 the video clips of those. I'll just show you one of them right now. So you'll see what I'm

00:19:53.240 saying. When all Tommy said was, how you feeling about your verdict today? How you feeling about

00:19:56.900 your chances today? Here, take a look to see for yourself.

00:19:59.040 So we saw several of those clips and that's all he said. I should point out, Tommy did not

00:20:20.920 swear at them. He did not insult them. Of course he didn't touch them or physically block them.

00:20:29.160 All he did was ask, how you feeling about your chances today? How you feeling about your verdict

00:20:32.140 today? You think you're going to get justice today? That kind of language. Which, by the

00:20:36.380 way, is more gentle than the language Tommy himself faces every time he walks into this

00:20:40.300 building when the media party scrums him. And that's it. That's it. And for probably an hour,

00:20:47.420 the attorney general's lawyer was going on about how that would cause stress and anxiety

00:20:52.660 to the rapists and how that in itself would disrupt the trial, even though the trial was

00:20:57.420 over. It's so lame and weak. I mean, look, I guess everyone deserves a lawyer. But surely

00:21:02.800 a lawyer has a professional obligation to tell the client, in this case the attorney general,

00:21:07.100 you got no case, mate. This is not something that should be prosecuted. But obviously it was

00:21:12.180 a political decision to prosecute. So I won't go on in greater detail other than to give you one

00:21:17.360 more little note, which is there were two other witnesses on the stand today besides Tommy. And one

00:21:22.600 of them was Michelle Dunderdale, the operations manager of the courthouse up there in Leeds. And

00:21:27.100 she made a bombshell admission in my mind. She said that her staff failed that day to give notice to

00:21:34.020 the public that there was a publication ban in place. They didn't have a notice on the door of the

00:21:38.080 courtroom. They didn't have it in the commuter information system at the court. And they didn't

00:21:44.600 have it on the TV, the in-house TV screens. So the phrase Dunderdale herself used was failure,

00:21:51.760 failure, failure, failure. They failed to warn people about a publication ban. Now, actually,

00:21:57.020 nothing turns on it because Tommy didn't violate a publication ban. He didn't say about anything

00:22:01.540 going on in the courts. He didn't know. He wasn't in the courts. He was outside giving political

00:22:04.660 commentary. But with that week a case, for the prosecution to still proceed was quite something.

00:22:10.920 This is as close as it gets to a sham trial as I've ever seen in a Western democracy. If this trial,

00:22:21.240 our seventh day in court, 14 months after the incidents in question, if this sort of trial were

00:22:26.640 happening in Russia or Venezuela or Iran, we would call it a political prosecution. And London itself,

00:22:35.120 the headquarters of Reporters Without Borders, one of the headquarters, the headquarters of Penn

00:22:39.480 International, sorry, they're headquartered here. Amnesty International's headquartered here. I think

00:22:43.580 Reporters Without Borders is in France. Not a peep from them. Not a peep from them. Well, that's why

00:22:51.520 the rebel is here. And we brought other journalists with us. I'm here, of course. I come all the time.

00:22:55.540 Jessica S., our young journalist, has come. My friend Andrew Lawton, an independent journalist

00:23:00.140 from Canada, has come. Avi Amini has come all the way in from Melbourne. And we crowdfunded the cost

00:23:05.660 of travel for these folks. If you want to help us, please go to realreporters.uk. I've got to throw

00:23:11.140 one more detail. I know I said I was done, but I've got to tell you one more thing. The Attorney General

00:23:15.680 grilled Tommy on the fact that Tommy claims he doesn't think the mainstream media does a good enough

00:23:23.680 job, and he thinks the people's media does a better job. The Attorney General took issue with this.

00:23:30.220 Like I say, there's politics here. The government of Theresa May was grilling Tommy Robinson on his

00:23:36.700 outrageous statement that maybe the mainstream media is broken. Yeah, it is. And that's not a

00:23:42.920 subject for a million pound trial. I'll wrap it up there, but I'll be back here at the courthouse

00:23:47.340 tomorrow morning, bright and early. I'll be here about 9 a.m. British time, which is 4 a.m.

00:23:54.260 Eastern time on the East Coast of North America. I'll be live tweeting from court. Last I checked,

00:23:58.720 I had almost 3 million views of my tweets from court. I encourage you to follow that if that's of

00:24:04.620 interest to you. Ezra Levant is my handle on Twitter, easy enough to find. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us

00:24:11.100 here at Rebel World, well, I guess it's not our world headquarters, that's Toronto. On behalf of all of us

00:24:15.880 here in London, home of the Magna Carta, to you at home, goodbye. And keep fighting for freedom

00:24:22.040 while you still have it.

Tommy Robinson is on trial AGAIN. Will he finally be silenced？

Summary

Transcript