A federal judge on Friday said the case seeking to disqualify Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for reelection will move forward, The Guardian reports.
Free Speech for People, an election and campaign finance reform group, says the Republican congresswoman should not be allowed to run because she supported the protesters who breached the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.
North Carolina Trump ally Rep. Madison Cawthorn recently faced a similar challenge brought by the same group. A federal judge blocked that effort in March.
Georgia Judge Amy Totenberg said Friday that she had "significant questions and concerns" about the Cawthorn decision, CNN reported.
In Cawthorn’s case, a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled that a Civil War amnesty law passed by Congress in 1872 still applies.
Siding with the challengers, Obama-appointed Totenberg told CNN the 1872 law was retrospective and did not shield individuals in the future.
Totenberg said she would likely rule on Greene’s motion to dismiss the case on Monday, two days prior to a hearing before a state judge on whether the congresswoman participated in or aided the Jan. 6 protest and if it disqualifies her from public office.
Greene’s lawyer in the Georgia case is James Bopp Jr., who cited the 1872 amnesty law in the Cawthorn case.
Free Speech for People is seeking to have Greene removed from the ballot under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states, "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."
The 14th Amendment was passed by Congress in 1866, a year after the end of the Civil War, and ratified in 1868.
Greene previously told CNN that she "never encouraged political violence and never will."
A pro-Trump events organizer in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 told Rolling Stone that Greene was part of a group of Republicans who coordinated with protesters.
"I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene specifically," the anonymous source said. "I remember talking to probably close to a dozen other members at one point or another or their staffs."
A Greene spokesperson said that she and her staff "were focused on the congressional election objection on the House floor and had nothing to do with planning of any protest."
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.