BURSTRep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) condemned the United Kingdom’s arrest of comedian Graham Linehan for his social media posts about transgender people.
The Silicon Valley congressman called the arrest “an offense to anyone who supports free speech,” in a post on the social platform X.
“I guess UK has not learned from the time prosecutors read passages of The Picture of Dorian Gray to convict Oscar Wilde,” Khanna continued.
Linehan, a co-creator of British TV shows “Father Ted” and “The IT Crowd,” said on Tuesday that when he stepped off the plane at Heathrow Airport on Monday, he was greeted by five armed police officers who “told me I was under arrest for three tweets.”
“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 state had mobilised five armed officers to arrest a comedy writer for these tweets,” Linehan said in a statement on Tuesday.
Linehan, who is known for asserting trans women are men, pointed to the posts on X about which police questioned him. One read: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls."
London’s Metropolitan Police did not name Linehan but said in a statement to media outlets that a “man in his 50s was arrested on suspicion of inciting violence," adding, “This is in relation to posts on X."
The arrest, which has faced fierce backlash internationally, comes ahead of Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage’s scheduled appearance before the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on free speech.
Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said last week, when he invited Farage to testify, that the hearing will “highlight how European online censorship laws, specifically the United Kingdom’s (UK) Online Safety Act (OSA) and the European Union’s (EU) Digital Services Act (DSA), threaten Americans’ right to speak freely online in the United States.”
Farage told UK news tabloid The Sun that he plans to discuss the Linehan case during his testimony on Wednesday.
“The Graham Linehan case is yet another example of the war on free speech in the UK. I will discuss this, the Lucy Connolly case and the increasing role of our police in non-crime ‘hate’ incidents on Capitol Hill tomorrow. Free speech is under assault and I am urging the USA to be vigilant,” he said in the statement.