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I’m en route back to Canada. For the last two days I’ve been in London, covering the latest trial of Tommy Robinson.

It’s a malicious prosecution: the government arrested him without any probable cause or a warrant, using the vast powers of the Terrorism Act.

I’ll tell you more about that in a minute. (By the way, the judge will release his verdict in three weeks.) But first, I want to tell you a very strange thing that happened.

Yesterday I was busy doing what I call “live-tweeting” — I was sitting in the court, typing as quickly as I could, publishing short, three-sentence updates on X (formerly Twitter).

I love taking that approach to trials: it’s sort of like taking notes, but publishing them to the world. And covering the small things in a trial can really give a sense of things, like yesterday, when I wrote about just how many glasses of water a young policeman was gulping down, as he gave his obviously false testimony.

I’ve never seen a more nervous witness. People seem to like it, because yesterday morning alone, I had more than 8 million views on my X feed. That’s a lot of eyeballs!

But then a reporter from the BBC “tattled” about me to the judge. And so the judge stopped the trial and told me to come in from the public gallery and stand in the court and to answer him. (Can you imagine a journalist “turning in” another journalist to try to silence him? Outrageous, but very on-brand for the BBC state broadcaster!)

The judge demanded to know what credentials I had to live-tweet and whether I was part of the left-wing National Union of Journalists. I told him I wasn’t and that I was from Canada. But I’m a member of Canada’s Independent Press Gallery, and more to the point, I’ve been live-tweeting from British courts for nearly a decade, without any problems.

Nonetheless, the judge banned me from continuing to live-tweet, until I could bring him proof of my credentials! I didn’t want to fight with the judge — that typically doesn’t go well — but overnight I sent him more information about my credentials. And first thing this morning, the judge had a mini-hearing with me once again standing in the court, but this time he said he would recognize my Canadian credentials.

He warned me, though, not to be so mean to the police and prosecutors in my tweets. (I had a lot of things I wanted to say in response to that — like, will you tell the other journalists to not be mean to Tommy Robinson? — but my better judgment kicked in and I told the judge I would comply.)

So I sat down in the courtroom, next to the other accredited journalists, and continued live-tweeting. (It was easier to hear in the courtroom, rather than in the public gallery, which is behind a thick glass wall.)

So all was going well, until the next break, when the judge left the courtroom. Suddenly, the court clerks said I had to leave the courtroom and go sit in the public gallery again. I was shocked — didn’t the judge just grant me permission, in front of everyone, to sit in the court?

No, said the clerk — only the permission to live-tweet, but I had to sit in the public gallery, not with the regime journalists. I insisted on having the judge himself weigh in.

This felt like a clerk was trying to undo what the judge had just done — perhaps she had another complaint from the BBC. She was implacable, but I was equally stubborn. So she called a security guard who started to put his hands on me and literally tried to physically pull me out of the courtroom before the judge came back! Absolute madness.

I didn’t want this to end in my arrest, even though I was completely in the right. I decided to accept this outrageous overruling by the clerks because of course I didn’t want to be ejected from the court, or even held in contempt. (But really, weren’t the clerks themselves defying the judge?) Madness.

The trial finished not long after. Between the two days, my tweets received nearly 15 million views — more than all of the regime journalists combined.

I truly believe my work makes a difference. Which is exactly why the BBC went to such extreme lengths to stop it. I think Tommy will be acquitted — if the facts and the law are all that are weighed.

Simply put, Tommy was stopped illegally, interrogated illegally and charged illegally. The police witnesses were weak, their witness statements lacked credibility and they were clearly motivated by political animosity toward Tommy, nothing to do with terrorism.

If it were anyone else, I’d be 99% sure of an acquittal, but this is Tommy Robinson: the number one enemy of the state. I’m starting to wonder if he can get a fair trial anywhere in the UK. I’m going to keep going back to cover Tommy’s trials, because this isn’t just a battle in the court of law — it’s a battle in the court of public opinion.

If you agree with me, please consider chipping in $50 or £25 to help me cover the cost of coming back on November 4th — that’s judgement day for Tommy. If you can help, please chip in below, or go to www.TommyTrial.com. I know the BBC will be there, so I’d better be there too, don’t you think?

There are a lot of great citizen journalists these days — I really believe it’s a growing movement. But my in-the-court tweeting is something that most citizen journalists don’t do.

I’m a former lawyer so I have a grasp of what’s being said; I’ve known Tommy for a long time; and I’m a fast typist: that’s a great combination for getting a message out, to contradict the BBC.

That’s why the bad guys hate me. If you can help me come back for judgement day, please do, by chipping in below or clicking here. (Thanks.)

I promise to do my best (including not getting arrested by courthouse security!)