Irish comedy writer Graham Linehan is seeking asylum in the United States after he was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport over anti-transgender social media posts he made.
Linehan, who created The IT Crowd and Father Ted, was arrested “by five armed police officers” at the airport as he was returning to the United Kingdom “to face trial after being accused of harassing a transgender woman.” Linehan’s arrest came in response to “three social media posts” he had made while in the U.S., according to the Daily Mail.
Irish-born Linehan, 57, who spent 30 years living in the UK, was returning this week to face trial after being accused of harassing a transgender woman with abusive comments and damaging her phone.
The comedy genius IT Crowd, Black Books and Motherland, was flying back from Arizona where he has made a new life for the past six months.
Per the outlet, Linehan, comedian Rob Schneider and journalist Andrew Doyle “formed a production company,” and Schneider expressed that their attorney, Aaron Siri was going to “ask the Trump Administration to give Asylum to” Linehan.
According to the Daily Mail, “it is not clear which visa Linehan could be granted.”:
It is not clear which visa Linehan could be granted, or if the Trump administration would give him a green card, which allows for permanent residency.
However, Donald Trump has prioritised resettlement to the US for groups he considers marginalised, including white Afrikaners from South Africa who he claimed were being subjected to ‘genocide’ back home.
Breitbart News’s Kurt Zindulka previously reported that in Linehan’s Substack he criticized how “in a country where paedophiles escape sentencing, where knife crime is out of control, where women are assaulted and harassed every time they gather to speak,” the government “mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer” over tweets he had written.
One of Linehan’s posts reportedly included one “in which he argued that biological men who enter female-only spaces are committing a ‘violent and abusive act.’”
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