Tommy Robinson’s fifth trial for live-streaming outside a 2011 Leeds grooming case—where 20 men, mostly Pakistani, were convicted of raping 15 girls aged 11–16—begins October 23rd at the Old Bailey after his 2018 conviction was overturned. Accused of "contempt" (a non-criminal charge), he lost 40 pounds in solitary confinement at HMP Only, allegedly due to food poisoning by Muslim inmates. Critics argue UK media silence stems from fear of racism labels, ignoring cases like Rotherham’s 1,400 victims. The host, joining 1,500 supporters in London, hopes neutral international journalists will expose systemic bias and link Robinson’s fight to Brexit’s elite-grassroots divide. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, one more time, Tommy Robinson goes on trial.
How long until we can call him a political prisoner?
It's October 22nd, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
I usually stay close to home because I do my show every weekday out of the studio here.
But as you know, I've gone to the United Kingdom half a dozen times in recent months for the endless trials of Tommy Robinson.
They really are endless.
I think this is his fifth court appearance on the same matter, and I fully expect there to be a sixth.
Just a recap for those who haven't been following, on May 25th, Tommy Robinson was live streaming political comments outside a courthouse in Leeds, the United Kingdom, where inside a Muslim rape gang was on trial.
And he, chance would have it, actually, the verdict in that trial was actually just released three days ago.
Huddersfield grooming.
20 guilty of campaign of rape and abuse.
Let me read a bit about this to show you how shocking it was and why Tommy was outside the court.
20 men have been found guilty of being part of a grooming gang that raped and abused girls as young as 11 in Huddersfield.
The men were convicted of more than 120 offenses against 15 girls.
Victims were plied with drink and drugs and then used and abused at will in a seven-year campaign of rape and abuse between 2004 and 2011.
So please understand what this is.
It is not an opportunistic rape in a back alley, a smash and grab style crime.
This is a systemic, perpetual, slow-motion crime done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times over seven years.
As in these girls were entrapped.
They were tricked.
They were blackmailed.
And then they were constantly exploited and raped.
They were turned into slaves.
These are children, by the way.
These are not adult women.
These were kids and these were men.
And all but two of the convicts are Pakistani Muslim men.
They would approach these girls, remember these are 11-year-old girls, and offer them, in some cases, a candy, or a cigarette, or a drink of liquor, or even just a ride in a fancy car.
And then they would get these girls to do something to show their gratitude or show that they wanted a real boyfriend.
Like send the men a naked selfie, maybe.
And then they were trapped.
Or maybe they were trapped in other ways, such as becoming a drug addict at such a young age.
And so the men would say, ah, you've sent me a naked selfie, and if you don't have sex with me now, I will send this picture to your mother and shame you and put it on the internet.
And so the child would comply, and then the men would say, well, now what you've done, if you don't let my friends rape you too, we'll do the same.
And then they were trapped and they were exploited.
And these girls were raped and raped endlessly night after night by this gang of men for seven years.
And there were threats of violence, and there was violence.
And police and the press and social workers are all shy about speaking out because they don't want to be called racist.
And these girls, well, they're obviously, they must be bad girls.
They must be runaways.
They must have low morals.
And where are their parents, by the way?
Because they were white working class girls and the men were mainly Pakistani Muslim.
And what are you, Islamophobe, you bigot?
Shut up about this.
Let me read some more from the BBC story.
The men, all from Yorkshire, went by nicknames, including Dracula, which Naaman Mohammed was known as.
Mohammed Imran Ibrar was known as Bully.
Abdul Raymond was nicknamed Beastie.
Imagine how cruel they must have been, raping 11-year-old girls to begin with, night after night, and then to have those nicknames on top of him.
One more quote.
Such was the man's hold over the girls.
One mother said her child cracked her head, jumping from a first-floor balcony at their home in order to get out after they ordered her to meet them.
The girl later told police, every time I went out, something bad happened.
I risked my life every time.
I was a mess.
Another victim who only escaped the abuse when her family had to move following a house fire said, it was the best thing I ever did, and that's bad, saying that burning your house down is the best thing you ever did.
So this horror, this seven-year nightmare, is what Tommy was protesting, and he was the only journalist outside the court.
He was protesting, and he had protested a year before at another rape trial in Canterbury.
And as he has done again and again, these trials are constant in the UK.
There's never a moment where there isn't such a trial.
This verdict last week was one of actually three connected trials of a huge Huddersfield rape gang.
It was broken into three parts.
It was so large.
Tommy was outside the court talking about the phenomenon, not talking about the particulars of the case of these 20 men, but talking about the nationwide phenomenon.
Here's the Daily Mirror reporting on the Rotherham rape gang, 1,400 girls.
16 years.
And as the mirror says, because people in authority were scared of being labeled racist if they tackled it.
1,400 girls.
Not 1,400 rapes.
1,400 girls raped for years.
Again and again and again.
Rotherham is a city of just a quarter million people.
Not a single white family would have been untouched by this.
White and the Muslim rape gangs, they target Sikh girls too.
Never Muslim girls.
Just white girls and Sikh girls.
Sometimes the Muslim rapists actually cite the Quran as justification for what they do.
Islam permits rape slaves, of course.
It's what ISIS did.
It's what Muhammad, the Prophet himself, did.
So why can't they?
This book called Easy Meet tries to document it, tries to calculate it, suggests the actual number.
The total number of girls raped in the United Kingdom by Muslim rape gangs is well over 100,000.
100,000.
Are you shocked?
Good, because it's shocking.
Which is why Tommy was swept off the streets, taken to a police station, charged with contempt of court for talking about the case, prosecuted, convicted, sentenced, and jailed in just a few hours, and sentenced to 13 months in prison for live streaming his political comments outside the court.
The hearing was so fast, mere minutes, Tommy himself didn't have a chance to say a word.
The judge who threw Tommy in prison, that was the same judge who presided over this rape gang trial, didn't even watch Tommy's video commentary.
He just threw him in prison for talking about what rape crimes, what rape gangs do.
That's how they roll in the UK.
The trials are secret until they're over, which means the excruciating details of the evil committed by these gangs is hidden from the public until one day of coverage in the media, and then it's over.
It's not pretty to listen to the details of these crimes.
I remember as a young man hearing the trial of Carla Hamalka and Paul Bernardo reported daily.
It was scarring actually.
It was more than 20 years ago and I'm still disturbed by what I read at the time.
Good, good, good.
Let people know evil.
And in the case of Muslim rape gangs, let little girls and their parents be warned.
Let politicians and police and prosecutors and social workers in the media be shamed about their silence.
Let the truth come out.
That's why Tommy Robinson was jailed.
Well, we crowdfunded his legal bills, even though he no longer works for us.
And we got him out of prison, the lawyers did.
And after they made him serve 10 weeks in solitary confinement, they starved him in there because a Muslim prison gang cooked the food and they made it clear to Tommy that they were poisoning him, so he starved.
He had to buy cans of tuna.
One can a day.
The prison warden wouldn't let him buy more, even with his own money.
He lost 40 pounds in 10 weeks.
The UK Court of Appeal finally released him, threw out the outrageous ruling from the Leeds judge, and gave a devastating condemnation of the conduct of the case against Tommy.
But bizarrely, they ordered a second trial of the same matter, and that's what tomorrow's hearing is about.
Same thing.
Tommy already served 10 weeks in solitary confinement port, first journalist in 70 years to be jailed for contempt, and the Court of Appeal wants it done again.
Second time?
Of course they do.
Because which is the easier problem to solve?
Massive, countless, relentless, evil Muslim rape gangs with perhaps hundreds of thousands of victims and tens of thousands of perpetrators.
Is that an easier problem to solve for the state, or is the easier problem this one mouthy man, the soccer hooligan, as they call him, with his cell phone reports outside the courts, which is easier, which is more politically expedient to deal with.
Just to remind you, Tommy was originally put in a relatively safe prison called Her Majesty's Prison Hull, where he was fine actually.
But then, after about a week, he was transferred to one of the highest Muslim population prisons in the UK, HMP Only, that's dominated by Muslim prison gangs.
Don't tell me that move wasn't done not to kill him.
It was done to kill him or to break him by forcing him into solitary confinement, claiming it was for his own protection.
That's a political prisoner.
The Court of Appeal itself says he ought not to have been imprisoned.
Contempt of court isn't even a crime, by the way.
It's akin to a speeding ticket.
They threw him in a dungeon.
What irks me about this isn't just that this obscures the real crisis, the rape of a generation of Bridge girls and the underlying problem of culturally unsuited migration, bringing rape culture with it.
Sorry to say it.
Do you want me to hide it too?
But what also troubles me, the establishment is a party to it, thinking perhaps that their young women and their lives will be immune to this.
But what just dumbfounds me is that the media in the United Kingdom is so complicit.
I've seen them at Tommy's trials.
They love to stick the dagger in.
They have a vendetta.
They hate him.
And he is a flawed man, as we all are.
But I have never seen such malice in the media ever and never such uniformity in the coverage.
Even countries like China, with a state domination of the media, have more variety in their various state-run media than the UK media has in relation to Tommy Robinson.
They all hate him.
So I'm going back over there.
In fact, I've pre-taped this episode and I'm en route right now to London.
And I'm bringing with me a group of other reporters from around the world who are not necessarily Tommy Robinson fans, but at least they are neutral enough and honest enough to report from the court.
We're crowdfunding their journeys.
Economy class airfare, economy-class hotels.
You can see the details at realreporters.uk if you're interested.
Well, come back after the break and you'll meet one of those real reporters next.
Welcome back.
Well, I am recording this late last week because today, as we air it, I am actually en route to the United Kingdom to cover the case of Tommy Robinson, our former employee, who, when he was independent, did a live stream broadcast outside the court of a rape gang trial.
Almost 30 men charged with horrific crimes against young girls.
Tommy was outside the courts giving his political opinions when he was swooped up by seven police, put in the back of a police truck, taken to the police station shortly to court, and within hours, he was sent off to prison for a 13-month prison sentence.
I later interviewed him after he got out of prison when the Court of Appeal threw out his improper conviction.
He spent 10 weeks in solitary confinement.
I learned from Tommy that it is against the rules in British prisons to serve more than 14 days in solitary confinement because it causes psychological damage being in isolation like that.
Well, the Court of Appeal did free Tommy from the prison, but it sent the matter back to another trial.
There have been some fits and starts, but the trial will be held in earnest on Tuesday, October 23rd at the Old Bailey.
I'll be there, and I thought, you know, I need some allies.
I need some real reporters because, oh my God, the mainstream media in the United Kingdom is so bad.
You think it's bad in Canada?
It is bad over there.
So I came up with an idea.
I crowdfund my trips over there.
Why don't we crowdfund trips for other journalists too?
Real reporters.
Subject to no editorial oversight by me.
They don't have to vet anything by me.
They still answer to their own editors and whatnot.
All we would do is take away the cost barrier because depending on where you're flying from, it could be $1,000, $1,500 to get over there.
You've got to get a hotel.
So we set up a website, realreporters.uk, and I called some colleagues.
And I'm delighted to say we've got four or five, six journalists coming, plus three cameramen.
We got a whole crew.
And joining me now in studio is one of them, my friend Andrew Lawton.
Great to see you again, Andrew.
Likewise, good to be here.
Well, it's so nice to see you in person.
You used to do some videos with The Rebel.
You worked on radio with Chorus.
You hosted a talk show there.
You did other things with The Sun.
You've had a busy journalistic career.
Tell us what you're up to now.
So now I'm living the independent journalistic life.
So I'm working with Candace Malcolm, who I know your viewers will know well at the True North Initiative as a fellow.
I'm writing for Looney Politics.
I'm doing a lot of work on my own platform right now, which people can get on my own website.
You're at Andrew Lawton.ca.
AndrewLawton.ca, thank you.
And really trying to get the story behind the story in a lot of cases, but also a commentary and analysis that you don't often see in the mainstream media.
And I say this as someone who for years worked within the mainstream media, albeit in an opinion-driven platform.
But that's why this opportunity to go to the UK was a golden one, because here's a story where, as you note, the media is not getting it right.
Yeah.
You know, I got to say, you did some work for The Rebel in the past, and my favorite video, and I still remember it very clearly, was a woman who was attacked, allegedly, in a store for wearing a hijab.
And it was turned into this big Islamophobia story, but you went one level deeper and found out that the accused herself was Muslim.
So this was just a quarrel between two people.
You told the other side of the story.
The mainstream media had their narrative, Islamophobia.
You told the other side of the story, but you did it calmly, fairly, nothing incendiary.
That was some of the best journalism we've ever published on The Rebel.
Well, and I think to this date, it's actually my most viewed video on The Rebel as well.
And people still ask me about it, and people have asked me for follow-up.
And the case has no follow-up because nothing was preceded because the case was not how it was described.
And I think that was a great example where editorialization wasn't even required.
The facts themselves shattered the media's editorialization of it.
But you were the only journalist I saw, maybe someone else has filled in the gap since then, who actually said, well, was this how it was perceived?
And I think that's what's going on a little bit with Tommy Robinson, especially in the UK.
Glad for No Preconceptions00:07:31
The media know him so well and they're all in their rut with him.
They hate him.
I feel like they have a vendetta against him.
I don't think he can get a fair report over there.
So, I mean, I've known your work.
I've known your work at the sun, on the radio, on TV, in print.
I know you worked with us in the past.
I thought, if we can just get Andrew Lawton over there, just cover the hotel and the flight and £100 walking around money just for like lunch or whatever.
No fee to you, no payment to you, no editorial oversight to you.
I won't even see what you do till it appears in print.
I thought that's a way to get her done.
That's sort of a citizen journalist approach, isn't it?
Well, it is.
And you know, even a lot of the left-wing media outlets have grants and bursaries and all of these funds.
The difference between what they're doing and what we're doing is that they've got millions of dollars to distribute, whereas we've got to go to people and get $25 at a time.
So, no, I think it was great, actually.
I was glad you did the idea, and I was glad to be involved.
Our people love doing it.
And we go economy class.
I mean, we made you sit in the back of the plane in the city.
That's okay.
I'm a man of the people now.
I can do it.
And nothing fancier than three-star hotels in London, but we've got to live that way if we're going to afford it.
And I think our viewers appreciate that, and they appreciate you taking the time because you're not getting paid for this.
No.
We're covering your flight in your hotel and £100 spending money.
It doesn't go very far in London, I'm sorry.
But it'll be great to have you out there.
And Candace has also come.
She's great.
I mean, our viewers know her and love her.
We got a young lady from Washington, D.C., named Cassandra Fairbanks.
She's coming.
We got Avi Yamini, who's a boisterous fella.
He's coming all the way from Melbourne, Australia.
Can you believe that?
Oh, no, and this is what happens when you have people that have a commitment to the truth.
And I've got to say, the Kermit Gosnell movie just came out last week, and I see a lot of parallels between the media's treatment of the Gosnell trial and the media's treatment of this issue.
Whereas they are more outraged by what Tommy Robinson did or is alleged to have done than by what the men on trial did.
I mean, the media was absent on that, which is why Tommy was there in the first place.
And in a way, this whole thing with Tommy, I think, and not to put Tommy in that position of having to be the sacrificial lamb, but their outrage with him has actually caused more people to pay attention to the initial trial that he was trying to bring attention to.
Well, I'm really glad that you're coming, and I think it's going to be collegial.
I've never met Avi Yamini before.
I've only met Cassandra Fairbanks for 10 seconds in passing, but it'll be very interesting to have a crew of international journalists who don't really know each other other than maybe online to be a counterweight to this little clique.
I have to say, you'll find it interesting, I think, Andrew.
The Old Bailey is this very old, it's a court and a prison, and it's very high security, and it's got its old rituals and customs.
Like, I'd almost say it's like a club.
And to see those journalists who were all in there together, those UK journalists, they were a club.
They were on a mission.
It was like a little political party.
And just to bring other eyes for another point of view, I'm going to make a prediction, Andrew.
You're based in London, Ontario, not London, England.
I'm going to make a prediction that you will have an enormous number of British viewers because they just want to hear another point of view.
That's why they've been watching me.
But it can't just be me.
Let's get other journalists around the world.
And I don't know what you're going to write.
You don't know what you're going to write.
You're going to write what you see.
It's not determined yet.
Unlike that pack of media clique that I saw at the Old Bailey.
Yeah, and one point that I would stress to people is that I don't know Tommy at all.
I've had a couple of correspondences with him.
I've never interviewed him.
And look, there are things that he said that when I see snippets and extras, I'm like, I don't know if I'm on board with that.
But I'm unequivocally for due process.
And I'm going in here not as a cheerleader.
I'm going in here as someone who actually wants to see what's happening.
And yeah, if there are people in the media that are telling a version of the story that I'm like, I was there and I didn't see that.
I won't hesitate to call that out.
My hope is that honesty will prevail.
I'm skeptical, as I think everyone has a right to be and an obligation to be.
But this case is going to be interesting, not just for what happens as far to the part of the official proceedings, but what happens in the broader cultural bubble around it.
Yeah.
You know, that's a very important point you make.
I mean, I knew Tommy.
I would interview him, and then I liked him, and so we hired him, he worked for us for about a year, and then when he was thrown in prison, I became an advocate for him.
I still think my reporting is accurate, but I confess I'm a fan and I'm a friend and I'm a supporter.
So I've moved, I'm an advocacy journalist.
The fact that you're coming with no preconceptions, with no personal ties, I think adds to your credibility when you call it like you see it.
Same with Cassandra, same with Candice.
Abby's a little bit more like me.
He's a cheerleader for Tommy.
I think your neutral fair journalism will be critically important and it will be a reason why you are trusted because you have no skin in this game.
No.
The British media, they've got this feud with them and it shows.
In a way, I think, and that's why we got the website.
We call it realreporters.uk.
And folks, by the way, if you haven't chipped in yet, we've got five reporters, three cameramen, and me, what's that, nine people.
So I think our total budget is about $17,000.
If you can help chip in, if you haven't yet, please go to realreporters.uk.
But I think that this is going to be maybe even a template for future journalism.
I feel good about it.
Last word to you, Andrew.
Look, I think that, first off, I have to say thank you to you and it's both of you.
It's you for having the idea to say this is important to do because the Rebel in the past, when you've covered Tommy, is still ultimately one voice.
And I think that when you mention that term counterbalance, it's great because now there are going to be five, six different outlets that are offering a narrative that might well compete with the mainstream medias.
And when I go in here, I'm looking not just at the Tommy Robinson case, but just in the UK.
I also am keenly aware of the Brexit battle that's going on right now.
And I'm actually going to be sitting down with, I don't want to say too, too much yet, because we're still firming up details, but one of the lead economists on Brexit and trying to also get a sense of some of the geopolitical issues in the UK separate from this because they're all part of that same thing of what's happening in Western politics, right?
I think you're right.
There's a lot of little themes in the UK that I, as a Canadian, say, well, we have the same sort of battles here in North America about the elites versus grassroots.
Well, and so much of what Tommy rails against is the byproduct of the EU in the first place.
So I think he is connected to Brexit.
You know, I'm an idiot.
I fly in and out same day, seven hours each way.
I hope you stick around London.
I mean, we're only covering, I think, three nights' hotels.
Yes, I'm on my own.
I've got a lot of things.
I think that's really smart.
I mean, I'm foolish enough to draw it home really quick every time.
But I hope you get an affection for the UK.
I hope you, like me, see the historical roots of our own country there.
And in a way, I've fallen in love with the UK again, even though I see it has a great number of troubles.
I enjoy covering it.
I hope you do too.
I hope you catch the bug that I've caught.
And I hope you find these things worthy of coverage, not only because British news consumers need another voice, but I think Canadians and Americans need a bit of an early warning signal too.
It's going to be fun hanging out with you for a couple days.
Absolutely.
We'll see you in London.
Cheers right on.
Thanks for the journeys.
Well, there you have it.
Andrew Lawton, one of about four or five other journeys.
We're still pinning down details on one of them.
Rebel Website Details00:01:23
We're going to be bringing in from Canada, the United States, and Australia.
For more details, go to realreporters.uk.
And if you can help us out, please do.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Well, that's our show for the day.
I am, as you hear this, making my way towards the court.
Actually, it's not until Tuesday morning.
The court opens at 10 a.m. at the Old Bailey.
Last time I was there, there was about 1,500 pro-Tommy Robinson supporters in the streets.
I counted, I think it was 16 antifuss-style protesters.
There were tons of police.
There's even a helicopter overhead.
I have no idea what's in store, but I'll do my best to give you the details.
Not just me, but of course, Andrew Lawton, Candace Malcolm, Abby Yamini from Australia, and Cassandra Fairbanks from Washington, D.C. We'll have, I think, three cameramen there too.
So we'll have a posse with us at least as big as the eight UK journalists who were there to stick the dagger in.
We'll have reports.
You'll find them on the Rebel website.
I'm not sure if we'll have a specialty site for them, but you'll be able to see that soon enough.