Tommy Robinson is a hero in Trump’s America. And Washington insiders are disturbed ...Middle East

WASHINGTON DC – In an unexpected twist of fate, the mystery of how Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the far-right agitator who calls himself Tommy Robinson, managed to enter the United States may have been solved by none other than Russell Brand.

The two men met in Florida last month, where Brand is living while he awaits trial back in the UK on multiple charges of rape and sexual assault, all of which he denies. Robinson paid him a visit in the Sunshine State, and Brand wondered how it was possible that his guest was even in America, given that he has been barred from the country for the last 13 years.

That ban occurred after Robinson, founder of the now-defunct anti-Islam group the English Defence League, was sentenced to 10 months’ imprisonment in Britain in 2013 for illegally using a friend’s passport to travel to New York, after the US had refused him entry over earlier drug offences. Despite being stopped by US immigration agents, he managed to enter the country illegally for one night, before returning to the UK to face arrest.

Robinson has a long criminal record and has served several jail sentences for charges including including assault and mortgage fraud. In 2024 he was jailed for 18 months for contempt of court after he repeated false claims against a Syrian refugee who successfully sued him for libel. Robinson was released from prison last May after his sentence was reduced by the High Court.

As a result of that record, he was blocked from travelling to the United States even during President Donald Trump’s first term in office.

Since Trump 2.0, however, Robinson has, incredibly, been welcomed into the country. Even Brand doesn’t appear to know how.

“How did you get a passport?” he inquired quizzically.

“No comment”, Robinson responded. But the cat did not get his tongue for long.

“I got a passport because I’m a journalist,” he proclaimed, although connecting the two is not normally a requirement. “I’ve come here as a journalist”, he claimed, saying “I had a list of invites by different influential people who wanted me to cover events”.

“You’ve got, like, a journalist’s visa?” Brand asked.

Robinson claimed that the United States had indeed issued him “a journalist’s visa. Just to work. I’m not allowed to do anything other” than work, he said. Then, noting questions (or as he put it, “a lot of hoo-ha”) over his visits in February to the US State Department and the House of Representatives in Washington, Robinson said he had walked the corridors of both landmarks “as a journalist…I’m going, asking questions and making content and making videos and asking questions and giving a fair portrayal of the United States of America, unlike the mainstream media would do”.

Those claims raise a raft of fresh questions about Robinson’s veracity, his ongoing American tour, and the extent to which the Trump administration has facilitated his presence on US soil.

If Robinson was indeed granted an “I-Visa”, which is reserved for foreign journalists seeking to work in the United States, he would have been required “with few exceptions” to provide the government with “a credential issued by another country’s professional journalistic association” and proof of a plan to “disseminate information or news that is not primarily intended for commercial entertainment or advertising”.

Under normal circumstances, an in-person interview is required at the US Embassy or Consulate issuing the visa, and a letter from the reporter’s supervising editor is also usually requested. I-visas are rarely issued on the same day that an application is lodged and it is not immediately apparent on what basis Robinson would normally qualify to receive one.“There’s no way somebody like this could have gotten in to the United States without special efforts from probably a high level,” former senior American diplomat Eric Rubin told The i Paper. In the late 1990s, Rubin, a former US Ambassador and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, lobbied against visits by Italian far-right figures seeking to travel to Washington, and he says Robinson’s tour of the State Department was “unprecedented”.

“This is disturbing, because this guy is not a good guy, and this guy is not a democrat,” Rubin said. He said the decision to allow Robinson to set foot on American soil in the very week that new British Ambassador Christian Turner was getting to grips with his job as Lord Mandelson’s successor – after the Labour grandee was forced to resign over his associations with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein – “has got to be seen as a poke in Starmer’s eye” by the Trump administration.

The Department of Homeland Security directed questions regarding Robinson’s visa to the State Department. The State Department told The i Paper that “due to visa confidentiality laws, we have nothing to share” about consular services provided to Robinson ahead of his visit.

But the agitator’s claims that he was engaged in “journalism” when he toured the State Department building runs counter to claims by government officials.

He was invited there by Joe Rittenhouse, a senior adviser on consular affairs, who announced on social media that he was “honoured” to welcome his “friend” to the building. He described Robinson not as a journalist, but as “a free speech warrior”.

Photographs accompanying the post showed Robinson admiring the display of global flags in the building’s main entrance, visiting the Benjamin Franklin Room where treaty signing and formal diplomatic ceremonies are hosted, and the Thomas Jefferson State Reception Room where elected leaders from all over the world are officially received.

The State Department claimed that Robinson was in the building “in an unofficial capacity on a tour”. It made no reference to his presence there as a reporter or, as he styles himself, an “independent journalist”, and there is no evidence that he conducted any interviews in the building.

Honored to have free speech warrior @TRobinsonNewEra at Department of State today. The World and the West is a better place when we fight for freedom of speech and no one has been on the front lines more than Tommy. Good to see you my friend! t.co/lCk86BTWX5 pic.twitter.com/FwljQcmvup

On Capitol Hill, Robinson did record an interview with Trump-supporting congressman Randy Fine of Florida, a prominent Islamophobe who faced calls to resign earlier this year after claiming “the choice between Muslims and dogs is not a difficult one” (Fine is an enthusiastic dog owner). Robinson also filmed reporter-style pieces-to-camera in the halls of Congress where, officials told The i Paper, he sought no press accreditation from the TV and Radio Gallery that sets guidelines for reporters’ conduct in the US Capitol.

Robinson has also given several interviews to “Real America’s Voice”, a propaganda streaming network heavily favoured in Trump’s White House. Under the terms of an I-visa, he would not be legally permitted to accept payment in the United States for any of those appearances, nor for any speaking engagements that he has booked here. In one video filmed in Miami, Robinson complained about having been “debanked” in the UK, and said staff at an airport car rental counter were not accepting his debit card.

Rubin believes that Robinson’s entry to America may have required the personal approval of “somebody high up in the Department of Homeland Security, or the White House, or State”. He says special arrangements would have been required, “because his name would have popped up when he landed at Dulles Airport [in Washington DC]. Anybody who has been banned from the US, it’s all in several databases, and the fact that didn’t happen means somebody intervened” to facilitate his smooth passage through immigration counters.

Robinson’s biggest coup here may have come in the form of a social media posting by Laura Loomer, the far-right influencer who holds no official government post but regularly meets Trump in the Oval Office.

“Tommy Robinson is a hero”, she posted on Elon Musk’s X. “He should be granted asylum in the US. He is a true political refugee, jailed for speaking truth about Islam in the UK”, she wrote, voicing an argument that may well come in handy for the seemingly well-connected agitator at a later date.

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