The Republican show of force at Donald Trump’s hush-money trial over the week has culminated in a formal effort to get the U.S. legislature to intervene in the process of the judiciary system.
Representative Andy Ogles introduced legislation Thursday to undermine the partial gag order imposed on the GOP presidential nominee. Trump is prohibited from publicly disparaging court staff, prosecutors, jurors, witnesses, or their family members during the course of the trial.
Ogles’s bill, called the “Let Trump Speak Act,” would severely restrict the limitations a gag order can place on a defendant, effectively undoing Trump’s order and preventing judges in future criminal or civil proceedings from reining him in with a gag. The act would also allow Trump to sue judges who gag him, Ogles claimed on Real America’s Voice.
“We have watched for years as a politically weaponized Department of Justice and Democrat activist judges have gone after President Donald J. Trump,” the Tennessee Republican told Fox News Digital. “There is no right more sacred to Americans than the right to speak freely, as guaranteed in the First Amendment.”
Trump has claimed the restriction is tantamount to “election interference,” effectively claiming that being unable to openly attack participants in the trial is illegal as it has hampered his re-election campaign.
A slew of Trump’s allies showed up to his hush-money trial this week in a collective show of support behind the criminally charged former president. Some of the politicos who trekked up to New York include House Speaker Mike Johnson, Representatives Matt Gaetz, Eli Crane, and Senators Tim Scott, J.D. Vance, and Tommy Tuberville. Members of the House Oversight Committee, including Representatives Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, and Anna Paulina Luna, also made the journey Thursday, going so far as to reschedule a contempt markup for Attorney General Merrick Garland so that they could be in the background of Trump’s trial.
On Tuesday, biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy, RNC co-chair Lara Trump, Eric Trump, and two Republican representatives showed up at the New York courthouse in matching suits and ties for a low-budget fundraising ad that attempted to portray Trump as a candidate unjustly locked in the courthouse.
