A 39-year-old man has been jailed for sending an “utterly deplorable” email to safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, one day after she was criticised by X owner Elon Musk.
Jack Bennett, from Seaton, Devon, pleaded guilty to sending malicious communications to three people between February 2024 and January 2025, including the Birmingham Yardley MP, at Exeter Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.
The Crown Prosecution Service said the email to Ms Phillips was sent on January 2 2025, one day after Mr Musk said the MP “deserves to be in prison” for denying requests to the Home Office for a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham.
The X owner also later branded her a “rape genocide apologist”.
The Prime Minister suggested that a “line has been crossed” and Mr Musk’s comments had led to threats against the minister.
Bennett was sentenced to 28 weeks in prison.
Sentencing him, District Judge Stuart Smith said the email had caused Ms Phillips “great distress”.
He said: “(She) was concerned for your potential to escalate or to encourage others for violence against her, having in her mind the murder of her colleague Jo Cox.”
Bennett also sent racist and offensive emails to Sir Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, in February 2024 and Matt Twist, the assistant commissioner at the Met Police, in April 2024.
The court heard Bennett’s messages began after being “caught up” in online right-wing propaganda during the pandemic.
The judge said the email to Mr Khan “purposely sought to disparage, insult and offend him based on his ethnicity and Asian heritage”.
He added: “The contents of your communications to all three was utterly deplorable, foul and abusive.
“Saturated in hate and intolerance and shamelessly racist and offensive.
“Your angry, poisonous and hateful rhetoric discloses the real disdain you held for ethnic minorities, targeting especially Muslims and immigrants in your abusive tirades.”
Caroline Salvatore, appearing for the defence, said her client had no previous convictions and he presented as being neurodivergent and “largely socially isolated”.
She said: “During Covid, he became exposed to right-wing propaganda and became caught up in it.
“He was encouraged to become incensed at various issues and he found their phrases became part of his vocabulary.”
She said he did not act until after his father died in 2023, which was a “triggering event”, with his mother, who he lives with, coming to rely on him.
“He became even more withdrawn and started to live his life online, one website led to another, and things got worse and worse for him.”
She added he was “genuinely motivated by the perceived incompetence of the people he sent emails” but he accepted he was trying to be offensive and does “realise how he was wrong”.
Bennett pleaded guilty to four counts of sending malicious communications and one of using a public communication network to send offensive emails.
Appearing for the prosecution, Hannah Cotton said the emails featured “serious racist abuse towards politicians” while the language used in the emails to Mr Twist was “highly offensive”, with Bennett calling him a “rat willing to engage in strong-arm tactics against white English patriots”.
She asked for restraining orders to be put in place for five years, which was granted by the judge.
