Home Office minister Jess Phillips has said that “disinformation” spread by Elon Musk about grooming gangs in the UK and the government’s response is “endangering” her life.

Phillips has come under sustained attack from the technology billionaire, who has labelled her an “evil witch” and “rape genocide apologist”, while calling for her to be jailed.

Britain has been convulsed in recent days by a dispute over the handling of historic grooming cases involving sexual exploitation of girls by gangs of mainly British-Pakistani men after Musk called for a new national inquiry into the scandal.

Musk’s outbursts against Phillips, who holds the safeguarding brief in the UK government, began after it emerged she had rejected a request by Oldham council for the Home Office to hold a Whitehall-led inquiry into the grooming scandal in the Greater Manchester town.

The Home Office has instead urged the local authority to undertake its own review, citing precedents for probes in other towns afflicted by rape gangs, including Telford and Rotherham, while highlighting a national inquiry into child sexual exploitation that concluded in 2022.

On Tuesday Phillips told the BBC that threats to her own life had increased since Musk’s salvos against her on his social media platform X, describing the situation as “very tiring”, but adding: “I’m no stranger to people who don’t know what they’re talking about trying to silence women like me.”

However, she added that her treatment at the hands of Musk was “nothing” in comparison to the experience of abuse victims.

Phillips told Sky News that SpaceX-owner Musk should “crack on with getting to Mars” and expressed her anger at political opponents, including Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who have pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs after Musk made the same demand.

Musk has been approached for comment.

UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer issued a staunch defence of Phillips on Monday, paying tribute to her record defending female victims of violence and abuse.

Phillips’ comments came after shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick conceded the Conservatives could have “done more” to crack down on sex abuse gangs while in government.

Jenrick defended the previous Tory administration’s record, but he told the BBC: “Could we have done more, should we do more now? Yes, absolutely — we have to root this out.”

He said a review by Professor Alexis Jay, who chaired a seven-year national inquiry into child sexual abuse in England and Wales that reported in 2022, only looked at rape gangs in six towns, but added they may have operated in up to 50.

Jenrick also defended his party’s criticism of the Labour government’s decision not to launch a Whitehall-led inquiry into the scandal in Oldham. 

Challenged over the refusal of the last Tory government to launch an inquiry into rape gangs in Oldham, he said the previous request came from a “small number of councillors”, while the recent one was by the local authority itself. 

Jenrick, who stood unsuccessfully for the Tory leadership last year, defended his controversial comments last week that mass migration of people to the UK from “alien cultures” with “medieval attitudes towards women” had contributed to the scandal. 

He said he would not “disguise” or “sanitise” his language to avoid causing offence, pointing to evidence that fear of being labelled racist had contributed to authorities failing to take action against gangs that mainly involved men of Pakistani heritage.

Starmer has accused Conservative politicians of “amplifying what the far right is saying” on child sexual exploitation, after failing to act “for 14 long years”.

Jay on Tuesday said there had been “politicisation” of the issue and warned that a fresh probe could delay the implementation of her review’s recommendations.

She criticised people for having “waded into the argument” over the issue “in a very uninformed way”. 

Jay has previously criticised the former Conservative government for failing to implement the main 20 recommendations in her 2022 report, which warned of “endemic” abuse across society. 

Florida Judge Aileen Cannon on Tuesday temporarily blocked the Justice Department from releasing a final report by special counsel Jack Smith, in the latest setback for federal criminal charges against Donald Trump.

Prosecutors dropped two criminal cases against Trump after he won the 2024 election, and the final report by Smith may be the last chance for prosecutors to explain their decisions.

Trump was charged with election interference in Washington, D.C., and with hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort and refusing to return them to the FBI. Smith dropped the cases after the November election, following a longstanding Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

But special counsels are also obligated to file a report on their actions with the attorney general when they finish their work. The current attorney general, Merrick Garland, has pledged to make most of those reports public.

Smith had been set to file his report to Garland on Tuesday, with an eye to releasing it to the public as soon as this week.

But Cannon — who was appointed to the bench by Trump and had earlier dismissed the documents case — ordered the DOJ not to share Jack Smith’s final report until a federal appeals court resolves the legal fight.

Cannon had thrown out the prosecution of Trump and two codefendants, longtime aides Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, on the ground that Smith had been appointed in an unconstitutional manner. After Trump won the 2024 election, the Justice Department dropped him from its appeal. But it continued the appellate case for the other two defendants, who raised concern that they would be prejudiced if Smith’s final report is published while they still face the threat of a trial.

Trump has also argued the special counsel was appointed unlawfully and that any public report would be legally invalid and hurt his transition into the White House.

He personally attacked Smith at a press conference on Tuesday, calling him “a mean, nasty guy” and praising Cannon’s decision to throw out the documents case.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is set to rule on the emergency motion to block the report’s release.

Rep. Gerald Connolly, Va., the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, criticized Cannon’s decision on Tuesday.

“DOJ must release its report on Trump’s mishandling of classified documents by January 20 so that the American people can understand the full extent of the President-elect’s unlawful possession of hundreds of the government’s most sensitive documents,” he said in a statement. “The public’s right to know is paramount.”

Appeal of sentencing fails

However, another case against the president-elect is moving ahead: the only one of his multiple criminal cases to go to trial.

A New York state appeals court on Tuesday denied the request from Trump’s legal team for a delay in his sentencing in his hush-money conviction, which is scheduled for Friday, just 10 days before his inauguration.

A state jury convicted Trump for 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump’s legal team had sought to delay or scrap the entire case, arguing the president-elect was immune from prosecution.

New York Judge Juan Merchan had previously delayed the sentencing multiple times, but recently said Trump’s lawyers failed to prove the president-elect was immune from the charges.