Father Ted creator Graham Linehan has been cleared of harassment against a trans activist but guilty of criminal damage to their phone.
The 57-year-old comedy writer, who had faced trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, denied both charges linked to posts made on social media and a confrontation at a conference in London in October 2024.
Summarising her judgment, District Judge Briony Clarke started by saying it was not for the court to pick sides in the debate about sex and gender identity.
She said she found Linehan was a “generally credible witness” and appeared to be “genuinely frank and honest”, and that she was not satisfied his conduct amounted to the criminal standard of harassment.
Pic: Ben Whitley/ PA
The judge said she accepted some of complainant Sophia Brooks’s evidence, but found they were not “entirely truthful” and not “as alarmed or distressed” as they had portrayed themself to be following tweets posted by the comedy writer.
While Linehan’s comments were “deeply unpleasant, insulting and even unnecessary”, they were not “oppressive or unacceptable beyond merely unattractive, annoying or irritating”, the judge said, and did not “cross the boundary from the regrettable to the unacceptable”.
However, she did find him guilty of criminal damage, for throwing Brooks’s phone. Having seen footage of the incident, the judge said she found he took the phone because he was “angry and fed up”, and that she was “satisfied he was not using reasonable force”.
The judge said she was “not sure to the criminal standard” that Linehan had demonstrated hostility based on the complainant being transgender, and therefore this did not aggravate his offence.
He was ordered to pay a fine of £500, court costs of £650 and a statutory surcharge of £200. The prosecution had asked the judge to consider a restraining order, but she said she did not feel this was necessary.
What happened during the trial?
The writer, known for shows including Father Ted, The IT Crowd and Black Books, had flown to the UK from Arizona, where he now lives, to appear in court in person.
He denied harassing Brooks on social media between 11 and 27 October last year, as well as a charge of criminal damage of their mobile phone on 19 October outside the Battle of Ideas conference in Westminster.
The trial heard Brooks, who was 17 at the time, had begun taking photographs of delegates at the event during a speech by Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at Sex Matters.
Giving evidence during the case, Linehan claimed his “life was made hell” by trans activists and accused Brooks, a trans woman, of being a “young soldier in the trans activist army”.
He told the court he was “angry” and “threw the phone” after being filmed outside the venue by the complainant, who had asked: “Why do you think it is acceptable to call teenagers domestic terrorists?”
Brooks told the court Linehan had called them a “sissy porn-watching scumbag”, a “groomer” and a “disgusting incel”, to which the complainant had responded: “You’re the incel, you’re divorced.”
The prosecution claimed Linehan’s social media posts were “repeated, abusive, unreasonable” while his lawyer accused the complainant of following “a course of conduct designed both to provoke and to harass Mr Linehan”.
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Following the judgment but ahead of sentencing, Linehan’s lawyer Sarah Vine KC said the court “would do well to take a conservative approach towards the reading of hostility towards the victim”.
She said the offence of criminal damage involved a “momentary lapse of control”, and was part of the “debate about gender identity, what it means”.
Vine said it was important “that those who are involved in the debate are allowed to use language that properly expresses their views without fear of excessive state interference for the expression of those views”.
She also said the cost of the case to Linehan had been “enormous”, telling the court: “The damage was minor; the process itself has been highly impactful on Mr Linehan.”
She requested he be given 28 days to pay the full amount.
Banking giant JPMorgan Chase’s decision to cut ties with the CEO of Bitcoin payments company Strike is reigniting concerns about a renewed wave of US “debanking,” an issue that haunted the crypto industry during the 2023 banking turmoil.
Jack Mallers, CEO of the Bitcoin (BTC) Lightning Network payments company Strike, said Sunday on X that JPMorgan closed his personal accounts without explanation.
“Last month, J.P. Morgan Chase threw me out of the bank,” Mallers wrote. “Every time I asked them why, they said the same thing: We aren’t allowed to tell you.”
Cointelegraph has contacted JPMorgan Chase for comment.
The decision has stirred fears of Operation Chokepoint 2.0, a term critics use to describe alleged government pressure on banks to sever relationships with crypto companies.
“Operation Chokepoint 2.0 regrettably lives on,” said US Senator Cynthia Lummis in a Monday X post. Actions like JP Morgan’s “undermine the confidence in traditional banking” while sending the digital asset industry overseas, she said, adding:
“It’s past time we put Operation Chokepoint 2.0 to rest to make America the digital asset capital of the world.”
Other crypto founders, including Caitlin Long of Custodia Bank, said the debanking efforts targeting crypto may persist until January 2026, pending the appointment of a new Federal Reserve governor.
Related: Fed mulls ‘skinny’ payment accounts to open rails for fintech, crypto companies
“Trump won’t have the ability to appoint a new Fed governor until January. So, therefore, you can see the breadcrumbs leading up to a potentially big fight,” Long said during Cointelegraph’s Chainreaction daily X show on March 21.
Long’s Custodia Bank was repeatedly targeted by US debanking efforts, which cost the company months of work and “a couple of million dollars,” she said.
The collapse of crypto-friendly banks in early 2023 sparked the first allegations of Operation Chokepoint 2.0, during which at least 30 technology and cryptocurrency founders were reportedly denied access to banking services under the administration of former President Joe Biden.
In August 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order related to debanking, aiming to prevent banks from cutting off services to politically unfavorable industries, including the cryptocurrency sector.
Related: $1.9B exodus and flicker of hope hits crypto investment funds: CoinShares
Lummis accuses FDIC of destroying records
Debanking concerns took another turn in January, when Lummis’s office was contacted by an anonymous whistleblower, alleging that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was “destroying material” related to Operation Chokepoint 2.0.
“The FDIC’s alleged efforts to destroy and conceal materials from the U.S. Senate related to Operation Chokepoint 2.0 is not only unacceptable, it is illegal,” said Lummis in a letter published on Jan. 16, threatening “swift criminal referrals” if the wrongdoing was uncovered.
Traditional financial institutions have long criticized crypto firms for enabling illicit finance. But US banks have themselves paid more than $200 billion in fines over the past two decades for compliance failures, according to data compiled by Better Markets and the Financial Times.
Bank of America reportedly accounted for about $82.9 billion of those penalties, while JPMorgan Chase paid more than $40 billion.
Magazine: Crypto wanted to overthrow banks, now it’s becoming them in stablecoin fight
Alibaba showcase its AI technology application achievements from Alibaba Cloud at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China on July 26, 2025.
Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images
Alibaba delivered better than expected revenue in its fiscal second quarter as sales in its key cloud computing division accelerated.
Alibaba’s New York-listed shares were around 4.3% higher in premarket trade as investors looked past a plunge in profitability.
Here’s how the company did in its fiscal second quarter ended Sept. 30 versus LSEG estimates:
- Revenue rose 5% to 247.8 billion Chinese yuan ($34.8 billion) versus 242.65 billion yuan the previous year.
Investors are focused on Alibaba’s cloud computing division which books its revenue related to artificial intelligence. Over the past few quarters, Alibaba’s cloud revenue growth has accelerated.
Alibaba reported a 34% year-on-year rise in cloud computing revenue to 39.8 billion yuan versus expectations of 37.9 billion yuan. That growth rate was faster than the 26% notched in the June quarter.
The Chinese tech giant said its investments in AI were helping its cloud unit.
“Robust AI demand further accelerated our Cloud Intelligence Group business, with revenue up 34% and AI-related product revenue achieving triple-digit year-over-year growth for the ninth consecutive quarter,” CEO Eddie Wu said in an earnings statement on Tuesday.
In September, the company said it plans to increase spending on AI models and infrastructure development, on top of the 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over three years it announced in February. Alibaba said on Tuesday it has spent around 120 billion yuan in capital expenditure toward AI and cloud infrastructure over the past four quarters.
Earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization (EBITA), a measure of profitability, increased by 35% to 3.6 billion yuan for its cloud division.
Alibaba has emerged as one of China’s leading AI players. On Monday, Alibaba said its Qwen app, the Chinese giant’s rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, surpassed 10 million downloads within the first week of its public launch. The app is powered by Alibaba’s Qwen artificial intelligence models.
Investors look past profit drop
Meanwhile, the company has been investing heavily in the cut-throat instant commerce market. This a product offering from Alibaba and some of its Chinese e-commerce rivals that promises super-fast delivery on certain items.
Investment in this new segment has weighed on the profitability of Alibaba’s overall business even as cloud computing remains strong.
Overall adjusted EBITA, a profitability measure closely-watched by analysts, fell 78% year-on-year to 9.1 billion yuan, with Alibaba attributing this partly to its investments in quick commerce.
But investors appear to be looking past this because of the growth acceleration at the cloud computing business and Alibaba’s core China e-commerce division which houses revenue from its online shopping platforms Taobao and Tmall as well as the quick commerce initiative. China e-commerce revenue rose 16% year-on-year to 132.6 billion yuan, with growth coming in faster than the previous quarter.
Revenue from quick commerce surged 60% year-on-year in the quarter versus 12% in the quarter before.
“In our consumption business, quick commerce continued to scale with significant improvement in unit economics and drove rapid growth in monthly active consumers on the Taobao app,” Wu said.
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