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Topics: US News
Cameron Frew
Under oath, Marjorie Taylor Greene has denied stealing a quote from Independence Day.
The far-right, QAnon-supporting congresswoman appeared in court on Friday, 22 April, amid a legal challenge seeking to disqualify her from re-election due to her support for the infamous Capitol riots last year.
Greene, who's mistaken the Gestapo for gazpacho, spewed transphobic remarks and became the subject of controversy every week since being elected, has denied any role in planning the insurrection.
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During the hearing at a Georgia state court in Atlanta, she was quizzed for three hours about the riots and her past comments, including one specific remark ahead of the 6 January chaos.
As per The Independent, she told protesters prior to the riots: "We aren’t a people that are going to go quietly into the night.”
Andy Celli, an attorney representing the voters who brought forward the challenge, asked Greene: "Now, that phrase... that’s not something that you came up with on your own, is it?"
When Greene said she didn't know what he was talking about, he replied: "You borrowed that line from the movie Independence Day, right?"
In the 1996 blockbuster, Bill Pullman's president gives a rousing speech inspired by the Dylan Thomas poem, 'Do not go gentle into that good night', also read by Michael Caine in 2014's Interstellar.
He says: "We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today, we celebrate our Independence Day."
While Celli's question drew laughs from the courtroom, Greene denied plagiarising the line. "I haven’t watched movies in a long time but from what I recall it’s a great movie," she said.
The attorney then asked: "So you were not communicating in referencing that film that January 6 was going to be a new kind of Independence Day?"
Greene said her remarks were purely about 'objecting and standing up for people’s votes in our election'.
Greene's lawyer James Bopp attempted to portray the lawmaker as a 'victim' of the riots, rather than an instigator.
Ron Fein, the legal director of Free Speech for People, said: "The most powerful witness against Marjorie Taylor Greene’s candidacy... is Marjorie Taylor Greene herself."
Under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, passed after the American Civil War, Greene could be banned from office for supporting an insurrection.
Charles Beaudrot, the administrative judge presiding over the case, will now present his findings to Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who'll decide whether Greene will be prohibited from running for re-election.
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