Man admits calling Tory MP Mike Freer’s office saying ‘I’m coming for you’
A man has admitted calling the office of Tory MP Mike Freer and saying “I’m coming for you” last week.
James Phillips, of Brampton Park Road, north London, pleaded guilty at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday afternoon to making a grossly offensive telephone call and assaulting a police officer.
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The incident happened on 31 January, the same day the Finchley and Golders Green MP announced on his website that he will stand down at the next general election following a series of death threats and an arson attack on his constituency office.
Mr Freer’s office received three calls on 31 January, two of which were “heavy breathing” and the third was a “man with a London accent”, prosecutor Adrita Ahmed said.
The caller said “I’m coming for you, you c***, not just Mike Freer but you as well”, Ms Ahmed told the court.
The phone call was recorded and workers in Mr Freer’s office recognised the number as that of 46-year-old Phillips.
He was arrested on Tuesday and taken into custody and was in a cell when he “swung his fist towards” a police officer who “jumped back”, Ms Ahmed said.
James Phillips, 46, of Brampton Park Road, north London. Pic: PA
The officer said Phillips said to him: “Why is it I’ve been homeless for 20 years, how is it I’ve had rats in my flat?”
Rita Patel, defending, said Phillips has a history of depression and anxiety.
Phillips was given conditional bail by chief magistrate Paul Goldspring until his sentencing on 6 March for a pre-sentence report to be written.
Mr Goldspring told Phillips he “cannot rule out the prospect of a custodial sentence being imposed”.
The Conservative MP for the London seat announced at the start of the month that he will stand down at the next general election over safety fears.
Mike Freer
In a letter to his local Conservative association, Mr Freer wrote that it “will be an enormous wrench to step down”, but that the attacks “have weighed heavily on me and my husband, Angelo”.
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The MP revealed that he and his staff had been wearing stab vests when attending scheduled public events in his constituency after learning that the terrorist who murdered veteran MP Sir David Amess, Ali Harbi Ali, had watched his Finchley office before going on to commit his crime.
“There comes a point when the threats to your personal safety become too much,” he said in an interview with the Daily Mail.
He said he has received a raft of death threats and abuse, and an arson attack on his office on Christmas Eve was the “last straw”.
A separate investigation into the arson attack is ongoing, with a man and a woman charged with arson with intent to endanger life.
The two incidents are not being linked, police said.
Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf says his party’s mission is to “remoralise” young people.
Speaking off the back of his party’s massive gains in the local elections, Mr Yusuf said young people were being taught to “hate their country” and that Reform’s mission was to change their morals.
“There has been an industrial-scale demoralisation, particularly of young people in this country, who are basically being taught quite deliberately that they should hate their country; they should be deeply ashamed of their country’s history; that the United Kingdom had a brutal empire,” he told The Times.
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“Look, of course, you know, the British Empire was not perfect, but I actually think overall the British Empire did much more good for the world than it did bad.”
He said the party’s mission was to “remoralise” the youth and that within a couple of months of gaining power, Reform would erect statues of great British figures and end “all this woke nonsense”.
He continued: “How many young people know who Isambard Kingdom Brunel is? Look at the character assassination that has occurred on the legacy of Sir Winston Churchill.
“The fact that they have to cover up his statue because they don’t want to provoke protesters. I mean that’s the sort of utterly indefensible so-called leadership that we’ve had and young people feel that in their bones.”
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Inside Reform’s election success
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He said he believes Reform leader Nigel Farage’s message is “resonating” with young people and added: “I think that a lot of young people we speak to feel very smothered by a finger-wagging sort of teaching class.
“They feel very restricted, they feel a huge lack of opportunity ā¦ You’re going to hear from us over the next couple of years more and more of a policy platform for young people, for Gen Z and for millennials.”
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Voters turn to Reform UK
Mr Farage has been more focused on what his party’s trajectory is doing to the Conservatives, saying in his column for The Telegraph that Kemi Badenoch’s party had been “hollowed out” and is experiencing a “strange death” due to the rising popularity of Reform.
He said the UK had reached a “new political age”, reiterating earlier claims that two-party politics “is finished”.
Reform chairman Zia Yusuf will be appearing on Sky News’ Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips from 8.30am this morning.
OKX founder and CEO Star Xu has publicly defended the crypto exchange after Tron founder Justin Sun accused it of failing to act on a law enforcement request to freeze stolen funds following a recent hack of Tronās official X account.
āOKX also has consumers protection policy according to law, we canāt freeze a customerās funds according to your personal X post or an oral communication. I think you should understand it as the CEO of HTX,ā Xu said in an X post.
OKX says there is no communication in the spam box, either
Xu said that the crypto exchange had not received any related correspondence through OKXās official channels. āOur LE cooperation team just checked the email, including the spam box; we havenāt received any request related with this case,ā Xu said.
In what is now an unavailable X post, but was screenshotted by Xu, Sun had earlier claimed that OKX has not responded to a āfreeze noticeā sent to its official email address from a ārelevant law enforcement agency.ā Sun said that he had no other way to contact OKXās compliance department.
āThese stolen funds do not belong to me; Iām acting to protect the community,ā Sun said. On May 3, Tron DAO told its 1.7 million X followers that its account had been compromised. Tron explained that during the breach, an unauthorized party posted a malicious contract address, sent direct messages, and followed unfamiliar accounts.
āIf you received a DM from our account on May 2, please delete it and consider it the work of the attacker.ā
In response to Sunās claims of inaction, Xu publicly called on him to provide a screenshot showing when and where the law enforcement request was made.
The Tron incident is one of several recent security breaches involving high-profile crypto accounts on X.
Related: Over 14,500 Tron addresses at risk of silent hijacking
Kaito AI, an artificial intelligence-powered platform that aggregates crypto data to provide market analysis for users, and its founder, Yu Hu, were the victims of an X social media hack on March 15. The hackers opened up a short position on KAITO tokens before posting that the Kaito wallets were compromised and advised users that their funds were not safe.
The Pump.fun X account was compromised on Feb. 26 to promote a fake governance token called āPUMPā and other fraudulent coins.
Meanwhile, the X account of UK member of Parliament and Leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell, was hacked to promote a scam crypto token.
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