A short summary: An Australian activist says he was detained and deported by U.S. authorities after joking about moving into Billie Eilish’s $6 million Malibu home following her Grammys comment, and the case now involves allegations that celebrity lawyers and a past foreign SWATing incident were used to label him a terrorism risk.
Drew Pavlou says he was detained and deported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after publicly joking that he planned to fly to Los Angeles and move into Billie Eilish’s $6 million Malibu home, referencing her Grammys remark that “nobody is illegal on stolen land.” The claim landed him in a legal and media storm, and it raises questions about when a joke becomes a national-security concern. From a conservative perspective, the episode looks like another example of celebrity influence bending enforcement decisions in unexpected ways.
What makes this more than a celebrity tiff is the allegation that Eilish reported him and that her legal team then relied on a separate 2022 incident to paint Pavlou as a terrorism risk. That earlier episode involved Pavlou’s email being used in a false bomb threat, an event he says came from the Chinese embassy in Britain and led to a SWATing attempt. If true, the two threads—celebrity complaint and a foreign-driven false flag—create a messy mix of immigration enforcement, legal muscle, and international interference.
Pavlou laid out his side on X, saying he was interrogated about “whether I had tried to blow up Chinese government facilities,” or whether he had “tried to assassinate Chinese government officials.” Those are heavy questions to face after a social-media joke about moving into a house. For anyone who values free speech, the idea that a comment about a celebrity home could trigger counterterrorism-style questioning will feel alarming.
He told followers that the “insane allegation goes back to July 2022 when I was the victim of a SWATing attempt by the Chinese Embassy in London,” after “they used ProtonMail to send a fake bomb threat in my name while I protested outside.” Pavlou insists he was a target of foreign harassment long before this latest clash, and that the earlier false accusation was used against him later. That history, if weaponized by legal teams or investigators, shows how fragile reputations can be when foreign actors try to manipulate systems.
Pavlou also wrote that he “was brutally arrested by London Metropolitan Police as a terror suspect before being totally and completely cleared by British authorities once it became clear that I had been SWATed by the Chinese Embassy. The Chinese Ambassador to Australia literally laughed about my arrest on Australian television and gloated about it at the time.” Those are sharp claims about how a foreign mission allegedly sought to disrupt and intimidate a political protester. The reaction of officials and media to those events matters a great deal.
He later added that the episode was “part of a broader overall state harassment campaign,” by the Chinese, as “the head of the Australian Federal Police [AFP] ultimately testified to the Australian Senate that the AFP carried out police raids in Australia to disrupt a pro-CCP foreign interference plot to find my address and violently harm me.” That testimony, if accurate, points to an alarming pattern of transnational coercion aimed at silencing critics. Conservatives will see this as proof that foreign influence can reach into domestic law enforcement and legal systems unless checked.
Pavlou went on Australia’s Sky News to lay out the full story, describing how the SWATing and subsequent clearances played out across jurisdictions. Media appearances like that give him a platform to push back against the narrative that he was a lone unstable actor. They also force questions about how law enforcement balances celebrity complaints, foreign influence, and civil liberties when those pressures collide.
Editor’s Note: Hollywood, academia, and liberal elites are out of touch with the average American.
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