The Trump administration is discussing the possibility of offering asylum to Britain’s Jews, The Telegraph reported. Robert Garson, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, said he had been in talks with the State Department about providing sanctuary for Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in the UK.
Mr Garson, who was born in Manchester, told The Telegraph that the UK was “no longer a safe place for Jews”. He said the Islamist attack on a Manchester synagogue and the widespread anti-Semitism evident in the wake of the Oct 7 Hamas attack on Israel had led him to conclude British Jews should be offered refuge in the US.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Garson said he could see “no future” for Jews in the UK and laid much of the blame on Sir Keir Starmer for allowing anti-Semitism to flourish. Mr Garson said he had raised the idea of offering the US as a safe haven to British Jews with Mr Trump’s anti-Semitism tsar in his capacity as a board member of the US Holocaust Memorial Council.
Trump hires anti-Semitism tsar
Mr Trump appointed Mr Garson to the council last May after firing board members appointed by Joe Biden. Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, based in Florida, took up office as the president’s special envoy combating anti-Semitism in December. He works out of the State Department at the level of an ambassador.
Garson hired by Trump to sue journalist
Mr Trump had hired Mr Garson, 49, to bring a $50m (£37m) legal claim against Bob Woodward, the investigative journalist. Donald Trump Jr, Mr Trump’s son, has also engaged Mr Garson as his lawyer for his literary business, Winning Team Publishing, which has published prominent conservative writers as well as books by the president and Charlie Kirk, the assassinated Right-wing activist.
Mr Garson, a former London-based barrister who moved to the US in 2008, said: “The UK is no longer a safe place for Jews. I have spoken to the State Department as to whether the president should be offering British Jews asylum in the US. It is certainly not an unattractive proposition. It is a highly educated community. I have spoken to people in the State Department and I have mentioned it in my role on the Holocaust Museum board. It is a populous that speaks English natively, that is educated and doesn’t have a high proportion of criminals. There were conversations.”
Mr Garson accused the Crown Prosecution Service of failing to uphold the law in its refusal to bring charges against protesters “on the streets of Britain who had glorified in the rape or death of Jews” after the Oct 7 2023 Hamas attacks. He said there was “a lack of political will” to use the Public Order Act to crack down on anti-Israel demonstrators.
Starmer has ‘turned a total blind eye to anti-Semitism’
Mr Garson added: “Keir Starmer has turned a total blind eye to anti-Semitism. The Prime Minister has allowed rampant anti-Semitism to become commonplace in society and has allowed it to come from those who really don’t have Britain’s best interests at heart.”
Mr Garson claimed areas of Britain would succumb to Sharia law if fundamental Islamism went unchecked. “Mark my words, they are coming for the Jews and then they are coming for your pubs. You are going to have sharia-compliant areas very, very soon,” he said. “In Britain, why has the IRGC [Iran’s hardline military] never been banned, and why hasn’t the Muslim Brotherhood been sanctioned?”
