Lucy Connolly is set to meet with members of Donald Trump’s administration following her release from prison for inciting racial hatred.
The former childminder told Dan Wootton on his YouTube show that US president’s lawyers were “very interested in the way things are going in the UK” and “keen to speak” with her, adding they are “big advocates for free speech”.
The 42-year-old, speaking for the first time since her release, claims she was been made “[Sir Keir] Starmer’s political prisoner” after being sentenced to 31 months in jail for stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers on the day of the Southport murders.
The case centred on her post on X that said: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care … if that makes me racist so be it.”
Connolly, the wife of a Conservative councillor, had pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing “threatening or abusive” written material after her post was viewed 310,000 times.
She served 40 per cent of her sentence, before being released on Thursday on licence.
Lucy Connolly is set to meet representatives of Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday (AP)Speaking to The Telegraph following her release, she said she made the post in a “red mist” fit of anger, before later deleting it after returning from a walk. Eight days later, she was arrested at her home and questioned by police.
She claimed the authorities wanted to “hammer” after she was refused bail and the Crown Prosecution Service released a statement that suggested she told officers in her police interview she did not like immigrants.
A press release from the CPS after her guilty plea on September 2 included a quote from Frank Ferguson, head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Unit, which said: “During police interview Lucy Connolly stated she had strong views on immigration, told officers she did not like immigrants and claimed that children were not safe from them.”
Connolly claimed her words were “massively twisted and used against me”, and is now considering taking legal action, saying she didn’t believe she would have had a fair trial had she pleaded not guilty.
Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar were killed in Southport, an incident that triggered riots across the country (Merseyside Police/PA) (PA Media)She said: “I don’t want to say too much because I need to seek legal advice on that, but I do think the police were dishonest in what they released and what they said about me, and I will be holding them to account for that.”
Also on Friday, she told Mr Wootton on his YouTube show that she was meeting representatives of the Trump administration on Saturday. Asked what she knew about the meeting, she said: “Not much, just that they’re very interested in the way things are going in the UK, and they are obviously big advocates for free speech, and their lawyers are keen to speak with me.”
The US State Department has previously accused the UK of having “significant human rights issues”, including restrictions on free speech.
Connolly also said in her interview with The Telegraph she believed she had been targeted because her husband was a Conservative councillor.
“I’m just a woman from Northampton living in a three-bed semi that worked as a childminder with a husband as an engineer,” she said. “Okay, he was a councillor. But that, people forget, that’s almost like a second job.
“His first job as an engineer, as a father, as a husband, we are nobody. We are not known to anybody. So I will never understand how it got to this.
“There’s people that have done far worse and people wouldn’t be able to name them, but they’d know my name, and I just find it all really, really bizarre.”
A Northamptonshire Police spokesperson said: “We are aware of comments made by Lucy Connolly in an interview following her release from prison. We hope to contact Mrs Connolly in the coming days to understand the issues she has raised around Northamptonshire Police.”
