Voters Say Greene Texted Meadows About Imposing Martial Law

ATLANTA — A group of Georgia voters challenging Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s fitness to run for reelection has given an administrative law judge a text message in which the congresswoman asks White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to discuss imposing martial law with the president.

Greene is set to appear on the Republican ballot for Georgia’s May 24 primary and has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump. 

Judge Charles Beaudrot, the administrative law judge who oversaw a hearing on the representative’s fitness to run for re-election last week, must present his findings to Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who will then make the ultimate determination over whether Greene is qualified.

In a motion to supplement the record which was provided to The Well News Wednesday morning, the voters David Rowan, Donald Guyatt, Robert Rasbury, Ruth Demeter and Daniel Cooper, say the text is among the 2,300 messages Meadows voluntarily disclosed to the House Select Committee investing the Jan. 6, 2021 siege on the Capitol.

In the message, dated Jan. 17, 2021, Greene tells Meadows, “In our private chat with only members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law [sic].

“I don’t know on those things,” Greene continued. “I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next. Please tell him to declassify as much as possible so we can go after Biden and anyone else!”

Greene’s attorney, James Bopp, Jr., told The Well News on Wednesday that the filing misconstrues the text and dismissed it as a continuance of an ongoing smear campaign against his client.

“If you look at the actual wording of the text message, it says, ‘In our private chat with only members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall (sic) law. I don’t know on those things.’ Then it goes on to say, ‘I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election.’ 

“The ‘I just wanted you to tell him’ part refers to the next sentence. It doesn’t refer to the martial law part. It’s ‘I just wanted you to tell him, They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next,’ etc. …”

So it’s a case of a misplaced period? Bopp was asked.

“Well, it may be. Because as you can tell, she also misspells the word ‘martial’ in martial law. You know, these are text messages. Can I look at your text messages and see how grammatically correct they are? This kind of communication method is just an invitation to grammatical errors. People are dealing with their fingers, and then just fire it off.”

To Bopp, the most egregious part of the filing is on its second page, where the voters assert that Greene was “still fighting against the peaceful transfer of power by advocating extra-legal means” 11 days after the insurrection at the Capitol.

“That statement is a complete lie, a complete fabrication,” Bopp said. “There were two things that were said here [in the text],” he said. “One is that several of her colleagues were talking about martial law. She was relaying somebody else’s conversation, something she overheard, not something she said herself. So she wasn’t advocating martial law. And then she gave a completely neutral statement about that. ‘I don’t know on those things.’ 

“So again, to say she was advocating for extra-legal means, for the imposition of martial law, is just a complete lie and fabrication,” he continued. 

Bopp applied the same critique to the arguments made at last week’s hearing, saying “lies and fabrication” were characteristic of “all of their evidence and all of their advocacy.”

“This is all about Russia Hoax 2.0,” he said. “They spent three years lying, knowingly lying and repeating those lies that Trump had colluded with the Russians over the election. And now we know conclusively that that is a complete and total lie. And in fact, the people that were colluding with the Russians was the Clinton campaign and the DNC to propagate Russian lies about Trump through the dirty dossier.” 

“I’ve learned that whenever the Democrats claim that the Republicans are doing something, it means conclusively that they are doing it,” Bopp said. “It’s called projection. Look at the ‘Rules for Radicals,’ the 1971 book by Saul Alinsky. One of the rules is to falsely accuse your opponents of doing exactly what you’re doing. You do that because once your activities are disclosed, it’s confusing to the public. This is part of their game plan.

“There is not one shred of evidence that my client engaged in insurrection or rebellion on Jan. 6, 2021. To engage in something is conduct, which means a direct, overt act of insurrection,” he said. “So in the absence of evidence of her actual conduct, they substitute lies and fabrication about what she says.

“And nothing she said — at any point — amounts to incitement at all,” Bopp added. “This text is 11 days after Jan. 6 and is completely irrelevant to what happened on that day … whether you’re talking about whether it was an insurrection or not, or whether she engaged in it or not.

“This is a smear, that’s all,” he said. “The Russia hoax was a smear and this a smear.”

The voters acknowledge Judge Beaudrot has already held a lengthy hearing on the matter, but they argue the text only became public on Monday, April 25, through media reports, and they had no other way to find out about it because the court denied their efforts to conduct discovery.

They also assert the text message may materially impact the case for at least two reasons.

First, they claim it undermines Greene’s credibility. “Greene’s testimony at the hearing that she could not remember discussing martial law with anyone was already dubious,” the filing says.

“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. 

Second, they contend, the text sheds light on the meaning of her pre-Jan. 6 statements. 

“Eleven days after the failed insurrection, Greene was still fighting against the peaceful transfer of power by advocating extra-legal means. This text, like her statements on Jan. 5, shows the lengths to which she was willing to go to help Mr. Trump remain in power,” the petitioners say.

The Well News has reached out to Greene for comment. This story will be updated.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and at https://twitter.com/DanMcCue.