Kathy Griffin’s Latest Audience Is Secret Service — Agents Grill Comedian On Trump Photo

The Secret Service grilled Kathy Griffin for more than an hour on Monday over the photo she posted online depicting the comedian holding a mock severed head of Donald Trump. The photo caused major outrage back in May with many social media users calling for Griffin to be indicted at the time.

While it was reported that the Secret Service opened an investigation into Griffin’s picture shortly after it was first posted online, this is one of the first times that news concerning the investigation moving forward has made headline news since that time. Steve Doocy on the Fox & Friends Wednesday morning show reported that the Secret Service “dropped by” to question Griffin as part of the on-going investigation.

As noted on Fox & Friends, “some things just aren’t funny” and Griffin is finding this out the hard way. According to KIRO Local News 7, the investigation into Griffin and her severed head photo is not closed, it has just moved into the interview process.

Griffin hired defense attorney Dmitry Gorin, who reported that Griffin was only exercising her constitutional rights when posting the severed head photo. Gorin also said,

“She basically exercised her First Amendment rights to tell a joke,” Gorin told the Times. “When you look at everything in the media, all the times entertainers make videos or express themselves in other ways, you’ve never seen an entertainer, let alone a comedian, be subject to a criminal investigation.”

The photo caused instant fury from both Trump supporters and the anti-Trump population alike. The consensus was that this has gone too far. The second round of disgust came from the public after it was reported Trump’s young son, Barron, saw Griffin’s picture holding a severed head that looked like his father when the photo flashed across the television set.

Barron, who is only 11, reportedly screamed for his mother and asked her if something has happened to his father when seeing the picture. According to the Washington Examiner in an article published at the end of May, “Barron Trump thought Kathy Griffin actually beheaded his father,” which is what the headline of the article stated.

Griffin held a press conference and shed tears during a very long apology regarding the picture. She reiterated a few times that it wasn’t her best decision, but it was done under the umbrella of comedy, which is what she does for a living. Her future in comedy looked less than stellar in the days following as she was fired from many gigs, including her hosting spot for CNN’s New Year’s Eve bash, which she shared with Anderson Cooper.

Cooper, who is a close friend of Griffin, was quick to jump online and post his thoughts on what Griffin had done in what appeared to many to be an attempt to distance himself from this event. As time went by and the photo fury died down a bit, Cooper posted online that he hopes Griffin “bounces back” from the event.

Anderson Cooper hopes Kathy Griffin 'bounces back' from photo https://t.co/BN0lrYn17y

— Jeff Simmons (@JackHites) June 15, 2017

What Griffin did next was seen as an odd turn of events by the folks across the social media sites. The comedian turned this around and claimed that Trump and his family were out to ruin her career, as reported by Variety back in June. She claimed that after Trump and other members of his family tweeted their thoughts about the picture of Griffin holding a mock severed head of Trump, she started getting death threats.

Griffin said at the time that Trump is “personally trying to ruin my life forever.” Griffin also said,

“I don’t think I will have a career after this. I am going to be honest, he broke me. He broke me. And then I felt, This isn’t right. This is not right. And I apologized because that was the right thing to do and I meant it.”

Kathy Griffin: Donald Trump ‘broke me,’ I won’t have a career after this https://t.co/iPX8qMVObJ pic.twitter.com/Qa3y8RXvdo

— Obsidian ? (@SIN604) June 21, 2017

The Secret Service investigation is on-going, with theories coming from many different sources on how this will play out, but many seem to agree jail time isn’t going to materialize for the comedian. It didn’t take long for Griffin’s severed head photo to be compared to Trump’s WWE wrestling video that went viral over the weekend depicting Trump slamming the CNN logo to the ground. Accusations were made that Griffin’s photo was suggesting violence against the president when her picture was posted online. This was compared to the CNN video posted by Trump as some have made accusations that the video is suggesting violence against the media.

According to the Los Angeles Times back in May, this picture emerged from a photo shoot that Griffin did with photographer Tyler Shields. TMZ was first to post the picture of Griffin holding the mock severed head of Trump, but Griffin herself posted a video of the photo shoot on her Twitter account. That video is not available anymore.

[Featured Image by Mark J. Terrill/AP Images]