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Article by Rebel News staff

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Tonight, on The Ezra Levant Show, Rebel News is back at the Ottawa courthouse for Tamara Lich, and this time, we weren't just covering the story — we were sworn in as part of it.

Some background, for readers catching up. Lich, the spiritual leader of the Freedom Convoy, was sentenced more than six months ago to house arrest. Both sides are appealing: her lawyers want an acquittal, and the Crown — Doug Ford's prosecutors, not Ottawa's, remember that — wants her to spend actual time behind bars. Today's hearing was narrower than either appeal. It was a bail variation hearing, to decide something that should be simple: can Lich, while under house arrest, keep working her job for Rebel News, including the travel that job requires?

I will take the witness stand today in support of @LichTamara and her right to earn a living. Doug Ford’s prosecutors want to remove her ability to do journalism across the country, even though the law expressly allows her to work. My colleague @ThevoiceAlexa will live-tweet!

— Ezra Levant 🍁🚛 (@ezralevant) July 22, 2026

House arrest in Canada comes with a standard exemption for work. Chris Barber, Lich's co-defendant, is a long-haul trucker and drives across provincial and international borders as part of his sentence, without controversy. Nobody objects. So we sat down with Lich's probation officer in Alberta months ago and worked out, line by line, an arrangement that let her keep doing journalism for us: speaking at conferences, writing a follow-up to her bestseller Hold the Line, travelling for interviews. It was agreed to. It worked, for almost a dozen assignments.

Then Lich attended a July 4th event at the residence of the U.S. ambassador, and the regime media lost its mind. The CBC ran with it. Even the New York Times weighed in. And within days, the travel exemption that had been working fine for months was quietly clawed back. When we planned to have Lich do some reporting on Parliament Hill today, since she was already going to be in Ottawa for the hearing, the probation officer said no — not just no international travel, no travel outside Alberta at all.

So we swore out an affidavit explaining exactly what Lich's role at Rebel News involves and why a national media company cannot employ a journalist who is barred from leaving one province. And because we swore to its contents, the Crown had the right to cross-examine us on it. Ezra took the stand today, prepared to answer questions about Tamara Lich's work.

Instead, roughly 95 percent of the Crown's questions were about us. Our Twitter account. Our criticism of the judge. A T-shirt Rebel News sells that reads "Convicted of Freedom." At one point, the Crown suggested we treat Lich "as a product to sell." None of it had anything to do with whether Lich has complied with her sentence — which, by every account, she has. It was an attempt to make the judge angry enough at Rebel News that she takes it out on Lich's travel privileges instead.

We'll say plainly what Ezra said in that courtroom: we believe in the right to criticize judges, and we're not going to apologize for having done so. The judiciary is a branch of government like any other, and it does not get a pass from scrutiny because it wears a robe. If the Crown's entire case rests on how sharp our tweets were, that tells you everything about how thin their actual argument is.

🚨My personal thoughts following today’s cross-examination of Ezra Levant regarding his affidavit in Tamara Lich’s appeal to vary her bail conditions:

Crown prosecutor Michael Purcell focused heavily on Ezra’s political opinions by reading various posts and commentary from X…

— Alexandra Lavoie (@ThevoiceAlexa) July 22, 2026

Alexa Lavoie, covering the hearing from the gallery in Ezra's stead, noted the judge let out an audible reaction at one point and overruled defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon's objection to admitting the tweets at all. Whether that means anything, we don't know yet. The matter is adjourned to August 14 for further argument.

Consider the imbalance here. This was already the longest-running mischief trial in Canadian history — roughly 50 days of court time, at the Crown's own choosing, prosecuting a woman for a peaceful protest. Meanwhile, actual rape trials and home invasion cases get dismissed across this country for lack of prosecutorial resources. Four Crown prosecutors spent two years on Tamara Lich. And now they want her barred from doing her job, and want more prison time on top of it.

We don't take government money, which is exactly why we're able to say all of this without flinching. But that also means covering Lich's legal costs, and now a half-time producer whose entire job is helping her navigate the terms of her sentence, comes out of what readers like you give us.

If you'd like to help keep Tamara Lich working, and keep us in that courtroom, please visit TheTamaraProject.com. It's the website the Crown spent an unusual amount of today's hearing fixated on. Make of that what you will.