GOP Lawmaker Honors ‘Hero’ Jan. 6 Rioter With A Post-Prison Gift

Dr. Simone Gold, an anti-vaccine advocate who reportedly ignored police and gave a speech to fellow rioters on Jan. 6, pleaded guilty in March to her role in the deadly attack.

Gold was sentenced to two months in prison, although she was released from a Miami federal facility two weeks before her sentence was up, according to MedPage Today.

Gold, who reportedly lives in Florida and isn’t a member of Gohmert’s congressional district in Texas, tweeted on Friday that she’d received a flag flown over the Capitol, the building she stormed on Jan. 6.

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Gohmert shared Gold’s tweet and called her “a patriot and an American hero.”

In a Friday statement, Gohmert claimed that Gold’s actions on Jan. 6 amounted to “peacefully walking into” the Capitol building. He said she was “the definition of what a political prisoner looks like.”

“God Bless Dr. Gold,” Gohmert wrote on his website. “History will not look kindly upon those who persecuted ― and prosecuted ― doctors who spoke out against the COVID lockdown, mask, and vaccine mandates.”

Victor Ruiz, a former combat medic, tweeted that Gohmert’s presentation of the U.S. flag to Gold was a moment that “lit a fire inside of me.”

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“To take an individual guilty of an assault on Democracy and give them the flag of the country they spit on? Louie Gohmert is a waste of oxygen,” Ruiz wrote.

Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist and former spokesperson for the right-wing Breitbart News, tweeted that Gohmert’s gift of the flag amounted to “rewarding a domestic terrorist,” and called for Gohmert’s expulsion from Congress.

Gold is set for one year of supervised release and is ordered to pay $10,000 for damage done to the Capitol building, MedPage Today reported.