The Secret Service has opened a file on John Mulaney after an SNL joke

When he hosted Saturday Night Live Last February, comedian John Mulaney joked during his opening monologue about the “mighty maniac” of Julius Caesar stabbed to death by “all the senators”.

“It would be an interesting thing if we brought this back now,” Mulaney told the audience.

The comedian said the joke was certainly not about President Donald Trump. But the Secret Service saw it differently.

On March 1, the day after the broadcast, the agency’s Protective Intelligence and Assessment Division opened an investigative case to investigate the “inappropriate statements about President Trump.”

Mulaney revealed the details of the Secret Service investigation during an appearance last month on Jimmy Kimmel’s chat show.

Its disclosure prompted BuzzFeed News to file a Freedom of Information Act request with the Secret Service.

On Tuesday, the agency turned over 27 pages. The file says a Secret Service researcher briefed the agency’s New York Intelligence Division on March 1, 2020, “for situational awareness,” of Mulaney’s monologue, which “was gaining attention considerable”.

“Although no direct threats were made, due to popularity it is likely citizens will report it,” say the documents, which included reporting on the Mulaney monologue from Breitbart and Fox News.

While the records note that the agency shut down before launching a full investigation, they also reveal that on March 2, a Secret Service agent contacted Thomas McCarthy, global security chief and senior vice president of NBC. , “To express the agency’s desire to discuss the aforementioned incident with Mulaney’s lawyers.”

Records indicate that the agency has not contacted Mulaney and recommended no further action.

However, when it appeared on KimmelMulaney said she spoke to someone at the agency who understood his joke had “nothing to do with Donald Trump because it was an elliptical reference to him.”

“I didn’t say anything about him,” Mulaney said, adding that he had been joking about Trump for over a decade. “In terms of risk assessment, no one who has ever looked at me thought I signed up above 1.”

Secret service documents indicate that Mulaney’s file was closed four days after it was opened on March 5. It was updated in December when Mulaney recognized during her Kimmel appearance that the secret services had made contact.