Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) provided “demonstrably false testimony” on the stand at a hearing meant to determine whether her reelection campaign is unconstitutional, attorneys for her opponents said in a Friday court filing.
Greene has been targeted by a small group of voters in her district, which lies outside of Atlanta, who say that she violated a provision of the 14th Amendment by advocating for insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. The voters are represented by Free Speech for People, a nonprofit group that works to promote fair elections.
For more than three hours on April 22, the extremist congresswoman largely dodged questions from attorneys asking about her past statements, providing little to no evidence to contradict the claims against her.
Greene told her supporters repeatedly, and falsely, that Donald Trump had won the 2020 presidential election instead of Joe Biden and encouraged them to take part in efforts to overturn the results, which culminated in the deadly attack on the Capitol.
Some of Greene’s comments were contained in videos or posts that had since been deleted from social media; she refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of videos shown to her in court.
“She hid behind her purported lack of memory, incredibly claiming during her testimony that she could not answer at least 80 of Petitioners’ questions because she did not ‘recall’ or could not ‘remember,’” read the filing by Greene’s opponents.
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The attorneys argued in their filing that everything Greene said on the stand should be deemed not credible.
At the time of her questioning, Greene said she had no memory of speaking to Trump or White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about the possibility of declaring martial law to secure Trump a second term. Several days later, however, CNN published a text message from Greene on that precise topic.
“In our private chat with only Members,” Greene reportedly texted Meadows, “several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law. I don’t know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him.”
“Whatever Greene may have meant by ‘I don’t know on those things,’ she made clear that she ‘wanted [the Chief of Staff] to tell [the President]’ this idea,” the attorneys said in their filing.
“Her failure to recall this last gasp of insurrection is no more credible than her other lost memories,” it read.
At another point during her testimony, Greene was asked about an October 2020 interview she gave, telling a man in a “1776” T-shirt that if anyone takes away your “freedoms,” you have to get them back “with the price of blood.”
“Remarkably, Greene denied in her testimony that suggesting freedoms should be obtained ‘with the price of blood’ was a call for violence,” the filing read.
Indeed, Greene claimed on the stand that she had never advocated for violence.
A Georgia state judge, Charles Beaudrot, is expected to make a recommendation on whether Greene is constitutionally qualified to run for reelection in the coming days. Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger ― who fought back against Trump’s election lies ― will make the ultimate determination.
