A group of Georgia voters filed a bid on Thursday to get far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) disqualified from office for her role in fomenting the violent Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
The voters filed a complaint to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) arguing that Greene is ineligible for office under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that anyone who “engaged in insurrection” is disqualified from serving in Congress.
The filing, which was shared with TPM, included a full laundry list of Greene’s deep involvement in the events leading up to and during the Capitol attack, including her communications with the organizers of the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the attack, her repeatedly parroting ex-President Donald Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen and her participation in Trump’s fake elector scheme.
The challenge against Greene’s candidacy is the second such challenge against a pro-Trump Republican who was intimately tied to the events of Jan. 6. A group of North Carolina voters has launched a similar effort to get Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) removed from the ballot in the November elections.
Both challenges in Georgia and North Carolina are being supported by Free Speech For People, a non-partisan constitutional law nonprofit.
What’s particularly damning in Greene’s case, the Georgia voters argued, is that the Republican congresswoman openly declared after the election that she literally wouldn’t allow a peaceful transition of power between Trump and Joe Biden.
“You can’t allow it to just transfer power ‘peacefully’ like Joe Biden wants and allow him to become our president because he did not win this election. He’s guilty of treason. It’s a crime punishable by death is what treason is. Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason,” Greene said in a Facebook video cited in the complaint.
“It’s rare for any conspirator, let alone a Member of Congress, to publicly admit that the goals of their actions are preventing a peaceful transfer of power and the death of the president-elect and Speaker of the House, but that’s exactly what Marjorie Taylor Greene did,” Ron Fein, the legal director of Free Speech For People, said in a statement on Thursday.
Under Georgia law, Raffensperger is required within 30 days to call a hearing before an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) of the Office of State Administrative Hearings to decide on Greene’s eligibility to run for reelection.
In that hearing (which is carried out like a trial court hearing), the burden of proof shifts to Greene to demonstrate that she’s qualified for office.
Then Raffensperger will make the final decision on Greene’s status after the ALJ issues its ruling in the case.
An official in the Secretary of State’s office confirmed to TPM that the voters’ complaint will be heard by the ALJ but declined to comment further.
Greene’s reelection campaign did not respond to TPM’s request for comment at the time of publication.
The similar voter-driven disqualification challenge against Cawthorn hit a wall earlier this month after a Trump-appointed judge sided with the congressman’s argument that he was protected by the 1872 Amnesty Act for Confederate soldiers, blocking the challenge from proceeding. The North Carolina voters have brought their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Read the Greene filing below:
