Ezra Levant recounts Tommy Robinson’s London terrorism trial, where he gained courtroom access as a journalist after presenting credentials from Canada’s Independent Press Gallery. The case hinges on Robinson’s refusal to unlock his iPhone without a warrant, though police interrogated him in just 34 seconds—only asking about his destination and car—with no terrorism-related questions. Prosecutor Joe Morris claimed links to extremism, but the judge reserved the verdict until November 4th despite Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s objections to Robinson’s Israel visit. Levant accuses the UK of weaponizing laws against citizen journalists, citing his own ejection by security and BBC’s censorship push, while exposing police inconsistencies and media bias. The episode underscores how legal and journalistic norms are collapsing under ideological pressure, leaving dissenters like Robinson vulnerable. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, a quick trip to London for Tommy Robinson's trial, but I was the one who was almost arrested.
It's October 14th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious boobug.
Oh, hi, everybody.
I'm in London, about to come back to Toronto.
I'll be home in a few hours.
I want to tell you the story of the last two days.
I've been here for Tommy Robinson's terrorism trial.
That sounds very scary to say.
Here, I'll show you the story as it unfolded on the streets of London.
And I'll tell you one thing, I'm lucky I'm able to go home.
Here, take a look.
Ezra Levant here.
It's just after 11 a.m.
As you can see, I'm standing outside the Westminster Magistrates Court.
There's a bit of a crowd milling around.
The court is on a break.
When we end the break in about 20 minutes' time, there will be concluding submissions, final submissions by the lawyers on the side of Tommy Robinson, Alistair Williamson, KC, who says he's going to talk for about an hour, and the prosecutor, Joe Morris, who says she'll need less time.
They also agreed on entering a fact, namely Tommy's passport that shows he goes back and forth from the UK to Spain, where he lives these days.
That's relevant, and that the police, when they stopped him, claimed that Spain was an exotic place to go.
Of course, a cursory review of his passport would show that he goes there all the time.
I say again, based on the trial evidence yesterday, if it were anyone other than Tommy Robinson, this case would never have been brought in the first place, and they would have dropped it by now.
There are dozens of police here.
In fact, I saw six police vans about a block away, which I think shows how the regime in the UK believes its own propaganda, that Tommy Robinson is some violent threat, when the people who are gathered outside here are friendly, wouldn't hurt a fly, law-abiding.
London itself is full of crime wave, knife crime, thefts.
In fact, I'm probably standing glued too close to the road with my camera.
People come by and grab iPhones in this town all the time, probably a thousand a day, are stolen.
So yeah, the UK government, the city of London have an obsession with Tommy Robinson.
They have a vendetta against him.
Pierce Starman, the Prime Minister, and Sadiq Khan, the mayor.
I want to talk to you for a minute about something else that happened this morning.
Because it happened to me, and I should tell you my side of the story.
So yesterday, a journalist for the BBC complained to the court that I was tweeting mean things.
Now, just stop and think about that.
He was like an informant.
He was like a KGB agent going to tattle.
That's not journalism.
Journalism would be, oh, Ezra Levant is in the court and he's saying spicy things.
But the world wouldn't care.
They would say, stop being such a weenie.
But this BBC journalist went to tattle to the court.
He said to the court, Ezra's saying mean things.
And he tried to activate the authority of the court against me.
And indeed, yesterday the judge ordered me to stop live tweeting while he reviewed things.
So I know the BBC hates it when they're called a state broadcaster.
They would probably say they're a public broadcaster or something like that.
Of course they're not.
They live off extracted funds from the public.
But when you as a journalist have no problem, they have that phrase here in the UK, to grass on someone.
That means to turn them into snitch, to rat.
That's astonishing to me.
I mean, does the BBC turn in people to the police?
Do they, if they're doing a news story and they see something they don't like, do they stop and put on their hat of being a policeman or something?
Just crazy unethical behavior.
Anyways, so yesterday, I said to the judge that I'm a member of the Independent Press Gallery of Canada.
And last night I got the president of the Independent Press Gallery and provided credentials to the judge.
So the first thing this morning at 10 a.m., The judge sort of called me into the room and said, look, I accept your credentials.
I understand you're a credential journalist back in Canada.
I will respect your credentials here in the UK.
But yesterday you said you were tweeting things that were too prickly towards officers of the court.
And I presume he meant police and the prosecutor.
And I absolutely was.
I mean, I was very critical, but no more critical than the regime media is towards Tommy Robinson.
Now, that's what I thought, but I wasn't going to talk back to the judge in his own court, especially when he was in the process of granting me credentials.
But in my mind, I was saying, hey, judge, do you have similar comments for the BBC or Sky News or The Guardian for when they trashed upon Tommy?
I mean, there's no such thing as a journalistic article in the UK that doesn't say Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defense League, or Tommy Robinson, convicted criminal, irrelevant, out of context, factually false in some cases.
That's just normal.
It's normal to defame Tommy Robinson.
The establishment is fine with it.
But God forbid you point out how the police and the prosecutor are heavy-handed.
Well, then it's a whole little kerfuffle.
I want to be obedient to the judge because it is his courtroom, and frankly, I'm a guest in this country.
And I don't want to be too poorly behaved.
But it was quite a moment to know that the BBC thinks of their function as snitching on rival journalists to shut them up, both commercially and ideologically.
Well, the judge actually credentialed me, and so now I'm sitting in the courtroom itself.
The audio is much better.
The acoustics are much better.
Oh, by the way, I want to point out one more thing.
You see this?
Let me move the camera down.
I've mentioned it before, but I've never worn it before until today.
That's my Queen's Jubilee medal granted to me, handed to me personally by the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta about a dozen years ago, a little more than that, for advancing freedom of expression.
That's why I got it.
Now, I know thousands of people got this award.
I mean, it's special, but it's not rare.
It's not unique.
And it's not a military award.
It's a civilian award.
And I've never worn it, partly because I don't know where I would wear an award.
And also another part of me thinks I don't want to pretend for a second that it's a military award, that I earned it in battle or anything.
I've just looked at it and thought about it.
And I keep it with me when I travel to the UK because I always have this fear that I'll be stopped at the border, like Tommy was, arrested and interrogated for helping Tommy.
It's just a fear I have.
So I just have the medal on me, and I put it on my lapel.
For the very first time, I've worn the medal when the judge summoned me today to talk about my credentials as a citizen journalist.
And it was my symbolic way of remembering that no matter what the BBC snitches say, I'm advancing freedom of expression, and they're the ones trying to get rival journalists jailed.
They didn't want to get me jailed today that I know of, but in the past, the BBC has actually reported me to police for tweets I've made.
That's a true story, and one I'll tell you another day.
Anyways, it's 11.15 a.m. I should head back on in because court's going to get underway in about 15 minutes and I want to live tweet it.
I will be, let's say, 5% less spicy because I want to honor my pledge to the judge.
I'm being lighthearted a little bit, but it's actually a very grave day.
Tommy Robinson could be sent to jail for months for the matter that we're gathered here for today, namely his refusal to give police the password to his iPhone without a search warrant.
They just thought they could stop him on the road and get that information from him under the terrorism activity.
Anyways, I'm going to go in now.
Thanks for watching.
If you want to help cover the cost of my economy-class airfare to London, I'd appreciate it.
I'm going back today, so I had two flights and one very low-cost hotel room, but still, unlike the BBC, I can't extract $4 billion a year from taxpayers.
If you want to chip in, you can do that at TommyTrial.com.
Thanks for your support.
So, Tommy, you've got the man Ezra.
So, Tommy, sorry, Ezra, what has been the outcome for the judge's decision for allowing you to live tweet?
And what was the rationale given to justify that decision?
Sure, well, the judge looked at my credentials from Canada.
I'm a member of the Independent Press Gallery.
And frankly, I think the UK needs an independent press gallery because the National Union of Journalists, I'm told, has a bit of a political bias and they do not accredit citizen journalists who don't tow a certain line.
The judge did say I could live tweet, but Wendell, my point of view is other people should be allowed to as well.
Journalism is not a profession like law or medicine where there's actually like journalism is an activity.
Either you do it or you don't do it.
So I think the judge has to open wide the doors to the court.
In the interest of transparency and modernity, he's got to stop preferencing the legacy media, Wendell.
And the great thing, you can now go back into court at 11 o'clock and you can live tweet and tell people exactly what is happening.
And I think I'm going to sit right next to the BBC when I do it.
So Tommy, are you happy hearing that?
Ezra.
I need Ezra.
I've asked Ezra every case because I know that the truth doesn't get out there.
So Ezra comes and Ezra's a machine.
I don't know if you've ever seen him in action.
I've heard.
I've heard it.
It's insane to watch.
You can sit there, you'll sit there talking to him, and then 10 seconds later, you'll get an email this long.
And it's like, how did you do that?
How did you even do that?
So I watched Ezra.
Do you think, you know, citizen journalism, because Ezra, you're a great organiser, and I'm not.
There should be an international citizen journalism recognized awards ceremony.
When you see like this gentleman, you see different, you see young bobs, you see all these people in different countries who are rising stars of citizen journalism.
There should be a recognition system, a worldwide recognition system, or some sort of program, like an international awards thing.
I'm not hitting that to you, Ezra, because you're going to organise it.
I'm on it.
I'll take the job.
We're not for rebel meeting you.
In prison, that was one of the things you said.
You want to see it happening.
I want to see the young people.
I want to see young people, the young auditors, the young live streamers.
I think that you've seen, we've done it at the United Kingdom.
We recognised them, brought them forward.
This is the future of media.
And they need to be recognised and encouraged because I know what we're going to see now, you saw it for Channel 4, is they're going to face mass attack.
They're going to face attack from government, from police, and from media.
The same way I face attack, and they're going to do it because they don't want them having any, they don't want to lose the control.
And as we saw in court yesterday, they lost the controls, they tried to pull it back.
Unfortunately, Ezra has the credentials.
But if Ezra didn't have those credentials, then today it's stuffed.
They're back in control.
So we need to somehow, yeah, we need to certainly focus on the citizen journalism aspect because there's so many good people coming.
If it wasn't for, what's his name who's on TV news sometimes?
In Epic.
Jack Maddenbrook.
Well if it wasn't for the reporting in Epping and the live streamers, we wouldn't have seen that Antifa got bought in.
It would never have been reported.
The public wouldn't have been aware of it.
So citizen journalism, I always say mainstream media, is there any here?
You are the cancer and citizen journalism is the cure.
All these guys with their phones, that's the future.
And that's how you stop the bullshit and stop the lies by instant on the ground live streaming, reporting.
And you can see the public want to support these citizen journalists.
Live Streaming Truth00:15:41
I think it's great.
As we introduce me to citizen journalists, so I think you were the first with Rebel Media, the first alternative.
Rebel media.
Media.
It's good to watch.
It's all good to watch, man.
And do you know what a mad story?
I was driving.
On your live stream.
From your live stream.
I pulled up around that corner, black tab, half a taxi driver got out and said, just watch you on the live stream.
there's your persifix and he gives it to me and he gives it to me back and he actually stopped in the game He went and got them from watching our live stream.
He must be sat in his taxi.
He's gone to a shop, picked him up, pulled up next to us around there, got out of the car and said, I saw your live stream.
There's some packs of Percy Pigs.
I've got it on camera, I've got my camera.
That is so great.
But that's a great demonstration that people around the world, people in London, they're watching, they have to be listening.
Do you know, even all the Arab lads, black lads in cars, just they've lost.
They've lost their attempt to demonise us and to make us toxics as racist or extremists.
It's all gone.
Even all the lads in court yesterday, no one buys it.
Everyone's shaking our hands.
So, yeah, there's going to be a battle and it's the people against the establishment.
It's not the white people, it's the people against the establishment.
If you look around at the people now, everyone.
Great.
Yeah, it's good, man.
We're the future.
Excellent.
So, let's just hope I'm not a jailing, shout out.
I've got a guy in the car.
But have you read that?
Not one single.
I sat down on my legal team and they said, We can't believe the reporting from yesterday.
Nothing that happened in court has been reported by the media.
Nothing.
Other than drive an expensive car, drive an expensive car.
Focused in on my mate's car.
How are you, Connie Darling?
Nice to meet you.
I'm very well.
And God bless you.
And I hope it all goes well for you today.
And you have to be relieved because that judge has got no friends in it.
He doesn't make you well.
Because it is.
I'm not going to wait for those.
So come on, ask me.
Go on.
Go on.
I was going to say something about the judge, but I'm not going to hear it.
Afterwards, afterwards.
Afterwards.
I can say you can't.
You've got to behave yourself.
I like your suit today, John.
I thought I've overkilled this.
You're such a courageous man.
I want to say to you, I always say to people, courage is not the absence of fear.
It is to do the next right thing despite the fear.
And this is what you do.
And God bless your father and your children and your wife.
And God bless you.
Thank you, Dunn.
Yeah, I love your jacket.
Come on, man.
Okay, thank you, sir.
Do you know something?
Do you know something of Tommy?
It's so great for me to be out on the streets with you and seeing the outpouring of love from so many people in this country.
They love you, man.
Who else could get you?
It's a great feeling for me, especially if you follow the last 15 years.
And it's a great feeling that all of those media sitting in there who have come here as smear merchants, no one buys their shit anymore.
No one's listening.
It doesn't matter.
I think you had 8 million people on your tweets, didn't you, Ezra?
Yeah, 8 million.
I love them.
So it doesn't matter what the BBC or Sky News or the Daily Mirror say because no one gives a shit.
No one's reading them.
People are picking up the citizen journalists, they're supporting the citizen journalists.
That is why citizen journalists are under attack in a major train by the mainstream media.
Because the mainstream media know that their time is running.
No one cares what they say.
No one gives a shit.
So I just hope we get not guilty today.
And I'm very grateful for ladies like you who've travelled, the ladies from Nottingham and people who come from all over and show me absolute love and stuff.
Three ladies from Glasgow yesterday.
Yeah, three ladies.
They got up at 1am and then came down.
Oh my god, man.
You know what I mean?
For me, that's amazing.
It's incredible.
On the UTK, I was talking to people.
It was fantastic.
Did you have a good time?
I couldn't get over the Westminster Bridge.
I had to go home and watch your telling.
I mean, it's 110,000.
We know it was 3 million.
That's how stupid they think people are.
I'm well drunk for getting the helicopter.
Because we could see it was 3 million.
And the police, they had no signals.
They're sending people to stations at a shop, so it's so crowded.
But I was on the one before where they held you over the weekend.
It was fucking marvellous.
Why am I fucking after you?
It's one of the safest bases for little old lady like me.
You know, all the points they walk after me.
I go up to everyone and say, where did you come from?
And they tell me where they've travelled from.
This up before, you know.
This way.
People polite to each other, you know, it's really beautiful.
Wait for the next one.
Tony, give me a minute on that whole conflagration with citizen journalists and credentials.
What do you think of that?
I saw you.
Yeah, it surprised me a lot because I've gone through the courts and had the argument myself about being a journalist and had the last judge I was in supported the fact that you don't need credentials to be a journalist.
You just need to have a social media presence and a following and you report the truth and report the news.
Now if you actually, let me have a look.
Let's have a look at this.
Because it's frustrating because what it is, it's an attempt to control the media again by government or by government journalists.
A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio, pictures, processes into a newsworthy form and dissimates it into the public.
This process is called journalism.
So where does it say you need credentials by government to do that?
That's a communist country that decides who are journalists and who's not.
So I think the judges took the wrong stance on that.
But I've been, again, I've been before many judges who have took an opposite stance.
But yeah, it was interesting because what it does is, well, we can see from yesterday's media reporting that if you guys weren't in court, it would have totally, they'd have had total control of the narrative.
No one would have been able to know what was actually being said on the dock by the officers, the lies, the trip-ups, the perjuries, all these different things wouldn't have been able to be seen.
I don't think the judge likes some of my spicy language, and fair enough, but the media, the regime media, uses spicy language for you all the time.
I mean, it's an anomaly that a police officer or a prosecutor gets criticised.
I know.
But it's standard operating procedure for you, and the judges never complain about that.
And it was unbelievable how bad the police were seen.
How what they've said in their statement was different, how they got tricked up so much.
And not one single report.
But the man needed a break.
He needed to take a look at it.
To drink a whole bottle of water.
He was about to faint.
The officer was about to faint because he got caught out of line.
And it was so blatant, he got caught out of line, he got tricked up and he got made to look like the liar he was.
And it was so blatant why I was detained.
I was detained because I'm Tommy Robinson.
Because of my political belief.
Not because of anything to do with terrorism.
No, that's not right.
And they, all the media, should be as alarmed as we are, but they're not.
They never are.
They don't give a shit.
It's a club.
It's a club and we're not in it.
But we don't want to be in it.
And I never want to be in it.
The more they behave like this, the more people it pushes to rebel news, to urban news, so urban scoop rather than.
Well, if we get an Aunt Gellie, we'll be chasing them down outside this court.
Tommy next to you.
What's his name?
Dom.
Say his name.
What's his name?
Yeah, Daniel or something like that.
Come and find you forgetting.
Tommy, next to you, you've got a well-known auditor, a well-known citizen of journalism.
Who's been able to recognise the voice more than anything?
It's a voice.
So what do you want to say to Tommy?
And you know, you are a well-known citizen's journalist.
Tell people where they can watch up.
Yeah.
AY underscore audits.
Say it loud.
He's everywhere.
He's everywhere.
It's fucking up.
So, so, so, hold on, hold on, get out of the way, please.
Get out of the way.
So, Tommy, so, Tommy, what has transpired upstairs?
I don't make sure we got the verdict is the 4th of November.
So, back to court.
Which again is more fees because they just said now we're going to have another bill for another day in court.
It's just insane, isn't it?
Another bill for another day in court.
We heard all the evidence, all the there was no evidence, yeah.
So, they arrested me under terrorism legislation, which is where they're meant to find out if I'm a terrorist.
All they asked me about, all they asked me about, was my political beliefs.
All they asked me about.
So, they didn't ask me about anything to do with violence, terrorism.
In the end, they threw in tank about far-right extremism.
They didn't ask me anything about that.
They just asked me about my legal, lawful, legitimate political beliefs, which is what this was about.
This is about detaining me because I'm Tommy Robinson and because I'm outspoken on subjects such as Islam.
You heard it from the final officer, Islamophobia.
So, what even is Islamophobia?
What you can't have an opinion of Islam without getting detained under the Terrorism Act now in Great Britain.
But that's it.
So, I'm 4th of November, which is a good thing because it means I get to go on a state visit to Israel tomorrow to form friendships and allegiances with a government that actually understands Islamic Jihad and doesn't just understand them.
A government will stand in the face and fight them rather than bow and pander to them.
Because, unfortunately, this government bows and panders to Islamic Jihad.
They have already, we've already, they've lost, they've surrendered already.
Surrendered, recognized a terrorist state.
So, yeah, I'm happy because I thought they may try and lock me up today to prevent that.
But, yeah, I'm off tomorrow.
Um, and then I'm back in court now on the 4th of November for my verdict.
And my final point: I went upstairs earlier on to use the toilet.
I then went into court one.
When I arrived, I saw this young journalist.
Being dragged out!
I was sitting in there, and they so the judges were the judge had said Ezra, after fighting, recognised, because he had to recognise that he's a legitimate journalist that's come from Canada.
Then, when the judge went out of the back room, the staff come in and said to Ezra, you need to get out of here.
And he said, Well, the judge, I heard what you're saying.
Well, the judge has just said, I can stay in it.
No, you need to leave.
Then they brought security in to forcefully eject.
And I was there.
Oh, you saw it, yeah.
I was there.
Okay, for us sitting in the dock to forcefully eject you from court.
Mad.
As I said, there's a war against citizen journalism.
Yeah, it's not a good thing.
In fought by the state.
It was shocking to me.
I mean, the judge gave me the green light, and then the staff wouldn't have it.
And they done it when the judge was out in the back.
So we don't know if the judge was on side or not.
Yeah, we don't know.
You're right.
Very strange.
So the judge may have gone out of the back and forcefully had you removed.
We don't know.
And that's only 1% of what you face here all the time.
Not even 1% of the deep state, if you can call it that, they don't want any challengers.
You're a challenger to it.
I'm a challenger in a smaller way.
They don't want anyone telling the other side.
What's insane has been their reporting on this case.
So let's see what happens on the 4th of November.
And then we can dissect.
If we win this case, which I hope we do, we can then dissect the absolute embarrassment of journalism from the entire row of mainstream journalists, as well as all the ones online.
None of them reported any of the unlawful activities of police officers, which have been proven as unlawful in court.
You know, the judge asked me to go easy on the cops and the prosecutors.
That's what he asked me to.
But you didn't ask him to go easy on the other side.
I was going to say he didn't ask anyone to go easy on you.
It's sort of normal that you defame Tommy in your mainstream coach.
Didn't pick up on any of the lies they told either with the way they twisted stories.
But yeah, I'm grateful for everyone who supported me.
I'm grateful for Elon Musk for giving me the opportunity to have my King's counsel in there.
So Carson Kay, my solicitor firm, and the King's Counsel, Alistair Williamson, was unbelievable.
He absolutely tore those three police officers a new arsehole.
Excellent.
And will you be having dinner with the BBC journalists and the Mr. Tutor?
I'll be finding them.
Once I'm cleared on the 4th of November.
Excellent, Tommy.
As normal, thank you very much.
Thank you.
People around the world, around the country.
Oh, hi there, Ezra Levant here again.
The court is over.
It's now almost 2 p.m.
The judge has reserved his decision.
He will announce it on November 4th, a date chosen to accommodate Tommy Robinson's trip tomorrow to Israel, where he's on a state visit.
I was a little bit worried that Tommy was going to be A, convicted and be jailed right away as some sort of diplomatic jibe against Israel.
The Israeli government inviting Tommy Robinson as a guest of the government didn't sit well with Kier Starmer, who's been very pro-Hamas these past few years.
Anyways, none of that drama happened.
The verdict will be out on November 4th.
Today, I sat in the main through closing arguments, final submissions by the two lawyers.
What's interesting about Joe Morris, the prosecutor, is that she claimed that the reason it was reasonable to arrest Tommy under the Terrorism Act and the reason he should be convicted of not giving his phone password is because they were proving or trying to prove he had connections to terrorists and to bad people.
But Alistair Williamson, King's Counsel, Tommy's barrister, pointed out that's the first time that argument was brought up.
There was no evidence whatsoever that when the police stopped Tommy, they were asking about his associations or connections to anyone terroristy.
In fact, what was clear is that the cops who stopped Tommy didn't ask him a single question about terrorism.
They only asked him about his politics, about news, about things that you could Google.
And that is not enough under the law to stop someone using the Mighty Terrorism Act, which lets you arrest someone for any reason or no reason for six hours, interrogate them, and they don't have the right to remain silent.
When I say arrest them for any reason or no reason, that's actually not quite true.
You can stop them and get enough information that if there is cause to believe that they're up to some terrorist activity, you can then detain them further and ask them further questions.
So let me be less casual about my phrasing there.
But Aleister Williamson proved that the cops did not do that.
They made the decision to interrogate him after precisely 34 seconds.
That was shown by the closed circuit surveillance cameras.
And the only questions that they asked before deciding he was a terrorist threat was, where are you going and whose car is this?
Both questions which Tommy answered.
So there was nothing whatsoever to suggest that Tommy was or is a terrorist.
And they made Tommy wait first for 40 minutes and then for 90 minutes while they desperately called around the UK to other police, the MI5, etc., trying to come up with something to pin on Tommy.
And no one had anything.
Even the Old English Defense League, which was shut down 10 years ago, which one of the cops mentioned, it wasn't a terrorist group.
It wasn't an extremist group.
It had spicy politics, to be sure, but it wasn't terrorists or extremists.
And it was gone 10 years ago.
So it was so desperate.
Time after time when the police were asked, well, what question did you ask Tommy?
I don't remember.
I don't remember.
I don't recall.
Sort of gross and sort of proves the whole thing was a political stitch-up.
Anyways, I think Tommy will be acquitted.
And I don't know if that's hoping too much because Tommy is an enemy of the state and he's treated that way.
Left Out00:02:49
One more personal note.
As I mentioned earlier, the judge yesterday asked me to stop live tweeting because he said I wasn't credentialed in the UK.
I said I was credentialed in Canada, but I didn't have the paperwork on me to prove it.
So I stopped my tweeting in the early afternoon, which is too bad because I had 8.5 million impressions and views on my tweets.
That's a lot of people preferring my version to the BBC version.
And the judge did this because the British Broadcasting Corporation, Kier Starmer's state broadcaster, was complaining about me.
Like, what a weird little snitchy thing to do.
Anyhow, this morning, first thing, 10 a.m., I presented actually a written letter from the Independent Press Gallery of Canada showing my credentials, and the judge accepted it.
And he let me sit with the mean girls in the courtroom itself rather than in the public gallery.
So I could hear better, which was good.
But then when the judge left the room, some of the clerks said I had to go.
I couldn't stay with the mean girls.
It would be like in high school being that you can't hang, being told you can't sit with the mean girls anymore.
You have to go sit with the uncooled kids or something.
It was very high school, and I said, no, I'm not leaving.
The judge already ruled that I can sit in the court with the other accredited journalists.
But then the clerks actually sicked the security guards on me.
And I thought, well, this is going in the wrong direction quickly.
I don't need to be arrested by some mall cop.
I'll just move literally three feet further back behind the glass wall in the public gallery.
But it shows just how authoritarian, how entitled, and how, I don't know, completely not caring the system is about freedom of speech.
I literally had just been accredited by the judge, but the busybody clerks said, no, you cannot sit with the other journalists.
I mean, it was so childish.
It made no difference other than it was sort of a symbolic humiliation.
But I think we'll get the last laugh.
I'm really encouraged by how things are going in the world of citizen journalism in the UK.
There's more citizen journalists than ever.
These things used to be just me and maybe two or three other independent journalists.
Now there's like 20 or 30.
And you can't put that genie back in the bottle.
And sure, they can be mean and say, you can't sit here and you can't type that.
But, I mean, to use another metaphor, I mean, the horse has left the barn.
You can close the gate now.
It's too late.
I think that the British courts have to update their media policy because most journalism these days is on social media.
No one's reading the Guardian newspaper.
And I suppose some people do.
It's still around.
But anyway, I hope that the courts modernize because not only are they shutting out a new kind of journalism, it's actually a proxy for ideology.
Citizen Journalism Boom00:01:40
Regime journalists who are allowed are typically left-wing.
Insurgent journalists who are individuals or upstarts are typically more freedom-oriented.
In this case, more Tommy Robinson-oriented.
So it is a kind of censorship by content.
Anyways, I'm going to make my way back to the airport now.
I'm heading back to Canada.
I've had so little sleep in the past two days, maybe four hours.
I'm so jet-lagged.
I hope I sleep on the plane.
By the way, if you're in a position to help me cover my airfare, I'd be really grateful.
I fly over here every time Tommy has a trial.
I stayed next door at the Premier Inn, which is a super affordable hotel.
It's actually right next to the courtyard.
It's actually really nice.
If you can help me cover the costs, I'd be grateful to you.
As you know, I don't take any government money.
Rebel News does not.
We crowdfund everything because how else could we be free to tell you the truth if we were taking government money?
And I think that's one of the reasons why the regime journalists hate us.
One last thing, I'm going to point to my ribbon.
That's my ribbon awarded to me, the Queen's Jubilee Medal, about a dozen years ago, given to me by the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta for advancing freedom of expression.
Today is the first day I've ever worn my medal.
I've never worn it before.
I just thought it was a little bit too much for me to wear.
It's not really my style, but given that I was sort of in the middle of a battle for free speech, I wore it today.
And it feels good.
It feels like the late Queen is on my side.
Anyways, go to TommyTrial.com if you can chip in to help cover the cost of me being here.