When John Mulaney continued Jimmy Kimmel Live last month, he told the host that the Secret Service had opened an investigation into him after jokes he made during his monologue on Saturday Night Live in February 2020.
“I made a joke that wasn’t about Donald Trump,” he explained. “The joke was about what a leap year was like and a leap year had been started by Julius Caesar to correct the calendar and another thing that happened to Caesar was that he was stabbed by a bunch of senators because he went crazy. And I said, ‘This is an interesting thing that can happen.’ “
On Tuesday, the Secret Service released a 27-page file of the incident, obtained by Rolling Stone. In the “Displays inappropriate behavior” activity, the agency’s protective intelligence and assessment division noted that Mulaney “made inappropriate statements about President Trump in Saturday Night Live. The investigation was opened on March 1, 2020, the day after Mulaney’s comments on the program.
“On 03/01/20 … [it was] found that a monologue performed by John Mulaney in a Saturday Night Live was gaining considerable social media attention, ”says the report. Elsewhere, he notes that “although no direct threats have been made, due to popularity, citizens are likely to report this.” The report states that on March 2, the agency contacted Thomas McCarthy, Director of Global Security at NBCUniversal to “express the agency’s desire to discuss the incident mentioned above with Mulaney’s lawyers”. (McCarthy did not respond to a request for comment.)
Although the file indicates that the agency did not interview Mulaney, the comedian told Kimmel that he spoke to an investigator about the incident. “Am I happy to have opened a file with me? Absolutely. Did I like that at the moment? Not really, ”he said. “But the person who examined me was very understanding.” He said the investigator understood that his part had nothing to do with Trump and that “it was an elliptical reference for him,” he explained. “I didn’t say anything about him… They were very nice in the interview. In terms of risk assessment, no one who has ever looked at me thought I had registered above one. “
Kimmel asked if there was anything else they should know, referring to any “online complaints” or manifestos against Trump. “I said, ‘No, I have bad writing habits, I could never make a manifesto,'” he joked. In the end, Mulaney said he was “released by the Secret Service, I was told.”
The comedian checked into a Pennsylvania rehab clinic last month for alcohol and drug abuse. Just before entering rehab, he got a job as a writer in Late at night with Seth Meyers. “I really needed a job,” he said to Kimmel. “First, I like having a boss and tasks to do. When I’m in charge of something, not so much of the best thing. “