Comedian John Mulaney quizzed after SNL monologue

America’s Secret Service opened an investigation after John Mulaney after he made a joke about Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live.

An agent even interviewed the  comedian over an oblique reference suggesting senators might stab the President in the back.

But Mulaney said the officer was ‘nice’ and ‘very understanding’ - but wanted to be reassured that the comic had published no ‘rants or manifestos’ online that might spark suspicion.

The probe originated from Mulaney’s opening monologue on the NBC show on leap day, February 29.

Explaining that leap years began under Julius Caesar, he joked: ‘Another thing that happened under Julius Caesar was he was such a powerful maniac that all the senators grabbed knives and they stabbed him to death. That’d be an interesting thing if we brought that back now…’

Mulaney told Jimmy Kimmel Live! this week: ‘I guess they opened a file on me because of the joke, and I have to say — am I stoked there’s a file open on me? Absolutely. Did I enjoy it in the moment? Not so much.

‘But the person vetting me was very understanding that the joke had nothing to do with Donald Trump [because] it was an elliptical reference to him. I didn’t say anything about him.

‘So they said, "Now is there anything else we should know about?" And I was like, "What do you mean?" … They’re like, "You don’t have any postings about Donald Trump anywhere online that we would find? Rants or manifestos?"

‘I said no, I’m not, I have bad writing habits, I could never pound out a manifesto. And I said I have been making jokes about him since 2007. So, I’ve been making fun of him for, you know, 13 years, there’s that, and they said, "Okay, well if it’s jokes."’

In 2017 Kathy Griffin was also investigated by the Secret Service after posting a mocked-up photograph of herself holding up a bloodied, severed effigy head of Trump. She, too, was cleared, but only after two months

Published: 3 Dec 2020