Newly unveiled Mark Meadows texts directly implicate Marjorie Taylor Greene
Even as Marjorie Taylor Greene is being forced to testify in a Georgia civil suit alleging she disqualified herself from the ballot by participating in the insurrection, CNN has now gotten its hands on a treasure trove of text messages to and from Mark Meadows – some of which directly implicate Greene.
Here’s what Greene texted to Meadows on January 17th, 2021: “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. I don’t know on those things. I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election.”
Much is being made of the fact that Greene spelled “martial law” incorrectly. But the real story here is that even eleven days after the Capitol was attacked and the election was certified, she was encouraging the White House Chief of Staff to have Donald Trump institute martial law. At this point this could only have been for the purpose of illegally keeping Trump in office – which means Greene was urging Meadows and Trump to carry out another/i> attempted coup.
The other big story here is that Greene wasn’t alone on this. In fact she tried to position herself as merely the messenger when she said that “several” other “Members” – presumably other members of the House Republican Caucus” – were the ones pushing for martial law.
Greene may try to hide behind the fact that she added “I don’t know on those things” to the end of her martial law plea. But at the least she’s a material witness to whichever unnamed House Republicans urged her to get on board with pushing Trump to institute martial law. In reality, martial law was never going to happen. Trump wasn’t within a million miles of having the muscle to pull it off. But the House Republicans who urged Trump to enact martial law are certainly guilty of seditious conspiracy – which comes with a long prison sentence.
Notably, Greene just got done testifying under oath that she couldn’t recall whether or not she urged Trump to enact martial law. If you’re under oath and you claim you don’t recall something that you reasonably obviously do recall, it’s still considered perjury. As we’ve talked about, Greene is testifying in a civil case brought by a private party, where if you get caught lying, very rarely are you charged with perjury; you typically just lose the civil case instead.
That said, it’s abundantly clear that Marjorie Taylor Greene will (at the very least) be forced to testify in the DOJ’s inevitable criminal case against Mark Meadows – and if she lies to the DOJ, she will get indicted for it. This is separate from whether her text message is enough to get her indicted for seditious conspiracy.
The timing is all interesting, of course. Months ago Mark Meadows gave a ton of incriminating evidence against himself and others to the January 6th Committee, some of which the committee has presumably been saving for its upcoming public hearings. Did the committee feed the Greene–Meadows texts to CNN today, in order to expose that Greene lied under oath on Friday? Or is CNN getting Meadows’ texts from someone else? The DOJ has almost certainly already has these texts for awhile, and if it didn’t, it does not. Wherever this buildup is heading, there’s got to be a whole lot more to it.
