The Georgia voters seeking to bar Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from seeking re-election because she allegedly supported the insurrection that took place in the form of the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol, now say newly revealed text messages she sent to ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows cast doubt on whether she testified truthfully during an administrative hearing earlier this month.
On 25 April, Ms Greene claimed she had no recollection of whether she ever called for martial law to be declared by former president Donald Trump during his push to remain in office against the wishes of American voters.
The same day, CNN reported that Ms Greene had sent Mr Meadows a text message on 17 January — three days before Mr Trump’s term expired — in which she said participants in a group chat for Republican members of the House of Representatives were saying the only way to “save” the US would be for Mr Trump to call for “Marshall [sic] law”.
In a filing asking the administrative judge who conducted Monday’s hearing to admit the text message with Mr Meadows into the record, attorneys for the Georgia voters said the text message “further undermines” Ms Greene’s credibility.
“Greene’s testimony at the hearing that she could not remember discussing martial law with anyone was already dubious. This text with President Trump’s Chief of Staff makes her testimony even more incredible because it seems like the kind of message with the kind of recipient that a reasonable person testifying truthfully would remember,” they wrote.
The attorneys added that the message “sheds light on the meaning of her pre-January 6 statements” because it shows Ms Greene was “still fighting against the peaceful transfer of power by advocating extra-legal means” 11 days after the attack on the Capitol.
“This text, like her statements on January 5, shows the lengths to which she was willing to go to help Mr Trump remain in power,” they said.
In a response filing, Ms Greene’s attorney James Bopp Jr argued that the alleged text message is inadmissible as evidence because it was laid out in a CNN article and did not include copies of the message in question.
“As a result, there is no one to cross-examine and this is hearsay within hearsay,” he said, adding that he was “authorized to say on behalf of [Ms] Greene that she has no recollection of this text and, since her texts are automatically deleted after 30 days, she has no way to verify anything about it,” he said.
He added that the voters’ claim that the text showed she was “still fighting against the peaceful transfer of power by advocating extra-legal means” was an “outrageous fabrication”.
“This claim is nothing short of a false and outrageous political smear, which this tribunal should not dignify by granting Petitioners’ Motion,” he said.
