Lawmakers and Trump officials gather in D.C. to show support as federal government drops charges against Maude family

“Just imagine a government that would be willing to de facto orphan American children over a mere dispute of 25 acres of land,” said Secretary Brooke Rollins.

Charles and Heather Maude with attorney Brett Tolman speak at the USDA press conference this morning.

In a press conference spearheaded by Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, lawmakers and Trump officials stood with the Maude family Wednesday to discuss the federal government’s decision to drop criminal charges against the young ranchers.

As reported over the past year, Charles and Heather Maude of Caputa, South Dakota faced 20 years in prison and $500,000 in fines over a minor boundary line dispute under the Biden administration.

“They have endured a torturous legal process and suffered as victims of the Biden regime’s reckless lawfare,” Rollins said in her opening remarks outside the Department of Agriculture (USDA) building. “Just imagine a government that would be willing to de facto orphan American children over a mere dispute of 25 acres of land.”

Rollins’ speech was impassioned, drawing parallels between the ordeal the Maude family faced and the abuses of power that led to the American revolution.

“This un-American sentiment, this claim to the right to rule without recourse, is also precisely the prerogative that some bureaucrats under the Biden regime decided to assert, and their targets were an innocent and unimpeachable American farm and ranch family, the Maudes of South Dakota,” Rollins said. “This family, targeted solely over what should have been a minor civil dispute over grazing rights on 25 acres of public land, was prosecuted, credibly threatened with jail sentences so extreme that they were told to find alternatives to raise their young children.”

Rollins made it clear that her team will look into how this prosecution initiated by the Forest Service was allowed to occur.

The Maude family

“Working across the Trump administration, we will ensure that all similar Biden-era prosecutions against law abiding Americans are immediately addressed,” she said. “We are ending regulation by prosecution in America and investigating how and why this wrongful prosecution of an American ranching family ever occurred in the first place.”

Toward this end, Rollins announced that the USDA has launched a new online portal for farmers and ranchers who have been victims of lawfare under the Biden Administration to report those abuses. The website is now live at www.usda.gov/lawfare.

Heather Maude spoke on behalf of her family. After expressing their gratitude, she shared her family’s history. The Maudes have been under a gag order and unable to speak to media since charges were filed last June.

“We are both fifth-generation farmers and ranchers, our families have a combined 250 plus years in production agriculture,” Maude said of herself and her husband. “We paused briefly in that pursuit in our grandfather’s generation when both of my grandfathers fought in World War II. Charles’ great-grandmother is a four-star war mom, meaning that four of her sons went to war and all four went home. But before and after fighting for the freedoms of this nation we have pursued our primary passion that led Charles and I to find each other, which is production agriculture. When this hit, it hit at the heart and soul of our place that has been in Charles’ family since 1910.”

Officials present at the event included Representative Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota, current Secretary of Homeland Security and former South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, Representative Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, and current governor of South Dakota Larry Rhoden.

“The case against the Maudes is a glaring example of the dangers of unelected bureaucrats with far too much power weaponizing the full force of the federal government in an unconstitutional effort to make felons out of farmers,” Rep. Hageman said in her remarks. “Sadly, this type of behavior was commonplace during the past four years but President Trump knows firsthand the catastrophic implications of lawfare imposed by an overreaching government. The dismissal of this case shows that ‘business as usual’ is no more.”

Later that morning, Rollins raised the Maude family’s case with President Trump at a nationally televised cabinet meeting marking the administration’s first 100 days.

“This family is one of many that we’ll now be talking to, to ensure that never happens again,” Rollins told the president.

“It’s an awesome, humbling day,” says Shad Sullivan, chair of property rights at R-CALF USA. “Rollins did a fantastic job and came out swinging. The Maudes have been thrust into a position of leadership that is very important. What we do with this opportunity will change the face of American agriculture.”