WASHINGTON Republicans in Congress have found a new way to prove their loyalty to Donald Trump: flock to New York City and attack the U.S. legal system at the courthouse where his criminal hush money trial is underway.

Nearly a dozen GOP lawmakers spent Thursday not at work in Washington but hanging around a Manhattan courtroom where the Republican presidential hopeful is facing 34 felony charges of falsifying business records to disguise payments made to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels quiet about an alleged extramarital with Trump a decade before he ran for president.

The goal of the Republicans heading to Trumps trial is simple: be seen on television bashing the court, the judge, the witnesses or laws in general whatever it takes to get credit for fighting on his behalf. It amounts to a party-wide embrace of grievances once held only by Trump and an attempt to link the entire GOP to the former presidents victim narrative.

I want all of the news to start asking the question, what is the crime? Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), one of the lawmakers at the courthouse on Thursday, shouted at the end of a press event they held. The defendant does not know the crime that was committed!

Beetlejuice! a heckler shouted back, a reference to Boebert getting kicked out of a musical production of the movie last year for vaping and groping her date.