An attempt to bar the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress over her support for the January 6 attack can proceed, a federal judge said.
Citing “a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import”, Amy Totenberg of the northern district of Georgia sent the case on to a state hearing on Friday.
A coalition of liberal groups is behind the challenge, citing the 14th amendment to the US constitution, passed after the civil war.
The amendment says: “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.”
Supporters of Donald Trump attacked the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, seeking to stop certification of his defeat by Joe Biden. A bipartisan Senate committee connected seven deaths to the riot. About 800 people have been charged, some with seditious conspiracy.
Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection. Acquitted, he is free to run again.
Organisers of events in Washington on January 6 have tied Greene to their efforts. Greene has denied such links and said she does not encourage violence.
In October, however, she told a radio show: “January 6 was just a riot at the Capitol and if you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants.”
In the immediate aftermath of the Capitol attack, Greene was one of 147 Republicans in Congress who objected to results in battleground states, an effort inspired by Trump’s lies about electoral fraud.
An effort to use the 14th amendment against Madison Cawthorn, an extremist from North Carolina, was unsuccessful, after a judge ruled an 1872 civil war amnesty law was not merely retroactive.
In her ruling on Greene’s attempt to dismiss her challenge, on Monday, Totenberg said: “This case involves a whirlpool of colliding constitutional interests of public import. Upon a thorough analysis of each of the claims asserted in this case, the court concludes that [Greene] has not carried her burden of persuasion.”
Even if a state judge rules against Greene, she could challenge the ruling. The Georgia primary is on 25 May, cutting time short. Greene seems likely to win re-election.
Writing for the Guardian this month, the Georgetown University professor Thomas Zimmer said: “Greene’s position within the Republican party seems secure … in fact, Greene is the poster child of a rising group of rightwing radicals … [not] shy about their intention to purge whatever vestiges of ‘moderate’ conservatism might still exist within the Republican party.”
One of the groups behind the challenge to Greene is Free Speech for the People. In January, the group’s legal director, Ron Fein, told the Guardian the group aimed to set “a line that says that just as the framers of the 14th amendment wrote and intended, you can’t take an oath to support the constitution and then facilitate an insurrection against the United States while expecting to pursue public office”.
On Monday, Fein said: “We look forward to asking Representative Greene about her involvement [in January 6] under oath.”
Mike Rasbury, an activist with the Bernie Sanders-affiliated Our Revolution group and a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Greene, said he was “elated” by Totenberg’s ruling.
Greene, Rasbury said, “took an oath of office to protect democracy from all enemies foreign and domestic, just as I did when I became a helicopter pilot for the US army in Vietnam. However, she has flippantly ignored this oath and, based on her role in the January 6 insurrection, is disqualified … from holding any future public office”.
