Donald is family. That could be our Trump card
NEW FIGHT TO STOP U.S. EXTRADITION Mum begs tycoon to help hack suspect
Lynn McPherson The mum of a computer hacker threatened with extradition to the US is using a family connection to Donald Trump to appeal for another Asperger’s sufferer facing the same fate.
Janis Sharp, whose son Gary McKinnon’s deportation was finally blocked by then home secretary Theresa May, is now battling to stop Lauri Love facing hacking charges in the US.
Janis believes she is a cousin of the president-elect through links with the Clan MacLeod on the isle of Lewis.
She is writing to him to f lag up the relationship in the hope he will show mercy in the 31-year- old’s case.
The former Glasgow University student is facing up to 99 years in jail for hacking into US government computer networks.
Janis said: “My dad Donald McLeod lived in Shulishader on the Isle of Lewis.
“The population was tiny, about 120, and the McLeods at that time were all related.
“Donald’s mother was Mary Ann MacLeod and she lived seven miles away in Tong, which in those days was nothing, because they were all crofters.
“All of the McLeods round there were related, how closely I am to him I don’t know but I would think we would at least be second cousins. I would need an expert to look at it.”
Janis’s father was born in 1906 and Trump’s mother Mary around six years later. She left the island at 18 for New York and until then had spoken Gaelic almost exclusively.
Although the surnames are spelt differently, genealogists say it makes no difference as to whether or not they were related.
Trump has visited his ancestral home in the Western Isles twice.
Describing the letter as the “most important” she will ever write, Janis said: “Donald Trump is very proud of his Scottish heritage and Lauri Love’s dad is Scottish so I thought I would appeal to him directly.
“Lauri needs to stay here or I really believe he will take his own life because he just couldn’t cope in an American prison – he’s so vulnerable.
“I’m not saying he shouldn’t be punished but he should be tried here in Britain.
“It’s a long shot but life, as we know it, is stranger than fiction.”
Home Secretary Amber Rudd ruled that autistic Lauri could stand trial in the US.
But his lawyers say that the extradition laws being used against him are a breach of his human rights.