Whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is allowed to serve another term in office may come down to an unusual legal challenge brought by residents of her district: Did her comments about Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss constitute an effort to “engage in insurrection or rebellion,” disqualifying her from service under the 14th Amendment?
The suit is unlikely to succeed, but it did mean that Greene was asked to answer questions about the events surrounding Jan. 6, 2021, under oath on Friday. CNN obtained text messages apparently sent from Greene to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the period between then and Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration suggesting strongly that some of Greene’s answers — particularly on who was responsible for the riot and what advice she offered Trump — were misleading or false.
During Friday’s hearing, for example, Greene was asked whether she understood that there had been violence at the Capitol when news first emerged about the building having been breached. In response, Greene fell back on a by-now well-worn argument.
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“I only knew what I was told,” she said. “I’d heard — I’d heard a gunshot. We all heard it. And we were so confused. We thought antifa was breaking in or [Black Lives Matter] because those were the riots that had gone on all throughout 2020, day in and day out, just horrible riots all over the country. That was the only thing that made sense to most of us.”
That may be what made sense eventually, but in the first minutes of the riot, Greene’s understanding was very different.
A text message apparently sent to Meadows at 2:28 p.m. indicates that Greene believed that Trump might be able to play a role in calming the rioters — something that would not be likely were the rioters supporters of Black Lives Matter or members of antifa, a loose-knit group of at-times violent leftists. (A request from The Washington Post to confirm the authenticity of the messages did not receive a reply by the time of publication.)
“Mark I was just told there is an active shooter on the first floor of the Capitol[.] Please tell the President to calm people,” the message from Greene read. “This isn’t the way to solve anything.”
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She was not alone in that assumption, of course. A number of text messages sent to Meadows at the time expressed the same sentiment: These were Trump’s people, and he had the power to pull them back. (But, of course, this is not what Greene said under oath.)
A bit over an hour later that day, though, Greene’s tone had changed.
“Mark we don’t think these attackers are our people,” she wrote, according to the messages obtained by CNN. “We think they are Antifa. Dressed like Trump supporters.”
The “we” here is telling. A few minutes prior, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) had sent Meadows a message claiming that he’d been told by Capitol Police that antifa members would be dressed as Trump supporters to instigate violence. Gohmert subsequently made the same claim publicly, without offering any evidence. CNN also notes that the idea of blaming the attack on antifa was raised by a senior adviser to Trump as the violence was unfolding, but it’s not clear that this drove Greene’s change of heart. (By that evening, though, an erroneous news article had triggered Trump allies to falsely claim antifa involvement.)
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The day after the riot, a message apparently sent by Greene reiterated the assertion about antifa — though not in as sweeping a way as her testimony would suggest.
“I don’t think that President Trump caused the attack on the Capitol. It’s not his fault,” she wrote to Meadows. “Antifa was mixed in the crowed and instigated it, and sadly people followed. But when people try everything and no one listens and nothing works, I guess they think they have no other choice.”
During Friday’s hearing, Greene was also asked whether she had ever suggested that Trump declare martial law in an attempt to remain in power.
“Did you advocate to President Trump to impose martial law as a way to retain power?” Greene was asked.
“I don’t recall,” she responded. When pressed, she reiterated: “I don’t remember.”
Among the text messages obtained by CNN is one from Jan. 17 raising that exact point.
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“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,” the message reads, with the word “martial” misspelled. “I don’t know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him.”
This, of course, is why “I don’t recall” is such a useful response to questions under oath: It’s a lot harder to prove that Greene actually did recall that text message than it would have been to point out a falsehood if the text message conflicted with her response.
It’s easy to get bogged down in point-scoring over the effort to determine who was and wasn’t involved in pushing Trump to use extraordinary means to stay in power. The text messages indicate that at least two of Greene’s answers might have been of questionable honesty — but what’s important is the extent to which she seemed to have excused Trump’s supporters and backed his wide-ranging effort to retain power despite his 2020 election loss.
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That said, the gap between her testimony and the text messages is stark. Under oath, she insisted that the rioters being BLM or antifa “was the only thing that made sense” to “most of us” as the attack was unfolding. But, in fact, her apparent assumption as the riot was underway was the correct one: that Trump supporters were deploying violence in defense of the president.
And then, less than two weeks later, she’d apparently take a more affirmative position on using force to retain power: casually floating the idea that Trump directly engage in a military-backed coup.
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