In the years before she ran for office, GOP congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote two conspiracy-laden blog posts speculating that the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to one counter-protester’s death was an “inside job” and promoting a debunked conspiracy alleging some Democratic Party leaders were running a human-trafficking and pedophilia ring – known as “Pizzagate” – was real.
Greene, running now to represent in the northwest corner of Georgia in the US House, made the comments in 2017 and 2018, writing for the now-defunct website of American Truth Seekers, a conspiracy-laden blog.
In a Facebook post, Greene wrote that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was guilty of treason and suggested she could be executed.
Greene responded to CNN’s report after publication, saying in a statement that she wears “attacks” from the media as a “badge of honor.” She did not address the past blog posts in her response and did not respond to further request for comment.
American Truth Seekers’s website stopped operating in 2019, but social media accounts and videos that link to Greene’s time as a correspondent at the website are still online. The conservative blog spread conspiracy theories about QAnon and once questioned if the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was a “massive false flag.” False flag attacks refer to acts that are designed by perpetrators to be made to look like they were carried out by other individuals or groups.
Greene is poised to be elected to Congress this fall after winning the primary in a conservative district. She has previously embraced QAnon, the false conspiracy theory that claims a “deep state” is working to overthrow President Donald Trump and that the President has been secretly fighting to bring down a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles that has infiltrated the US government and other elite institutions.
Trump praised Greene as a “future Republican Star” and “a real WINNER!” in a tweet following her primary win despite Greene’s ties to QAnon, which the FBI has labeled as a potential domestic terrorist threat. Greene tweeted on Tuesday that she had been invited to attend Trump’s Republican convention speech at the White House on Thursday. “I’m honored and thrilled,” she wrote, attaching an image of an invitation.
Greene has subsequently backtracked on her embrace of the conspiracy, telling Fox News last week, “once I started finding misinformation, I decided that I would choose another path.”
But writing for “American Truth Seekers” in a 2017 blog post, Greene spread other conspiracy theories, including that the deadly white supremacist rally held in 2017 in Charlottesville was an “inside job” to “further the agenda of the elites.”
Greene cited a blog post from Your News Wire, a website that spreads political misinformation and conspiracy theories, that quoted an anonymous police officer alleging the events at Charlottesville were engineered for a specific agenda.
Greene speculated that agenda included a “coordinated war” by former President Barack Obama and other Democratic operatives to overthrow Trump from power.
“What would be the agenda of the elites? Hmm.. Remember Barack Obama’s roots are in community organizing. As a matter of fact that’s about all he did before he became President. It’s also been reported that Obama has an office set up in Washington DC that is being run like a war room, with daily meetings. What would they be up to?” wrote Greene.
Greene also questioned whether the actions of the white nationalist who rammed his car into 19 people and killed one woman were intentional or not and said he may have done so out of fear.
“Whether this is true or not, it is beyond tragic that James Alex Fields Jr rammed his car into the crowd killing 1 and injuring 19 others. If it was intentional and premeditated, then he deserves to be held accountable. Yet if his reaction was out of fear and hitting the crowd was actually an accident, then that changes the narrative of what happened in Charlottesville this past weekend,” wrote Greene.
Fields was later convicted of first-degree murder and nine other charges, and he pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes. He was sentenced to life in prison in both federal court and Virginia state courts, sentences he will serve consecutively.
NBC News first reported on some of Greene’s writings for the American Truth Seekers blog, including her promotion of the “Clinton Kill List,” a baseless conspiracy that alleges Hillary Clinton ordered assassinations on her associates.
In another post from 2017, Greene linked to a blog post from a conspiracy website that speculated that “Pizzagate”– a debunked conspiracy theory from 2016 that claimed that the Clintons and Democratic operatives were running a pedophilia ring out of a pizzeria in Washington, DC – was real.
“Shockingly, the website tells about information that was only whispered about and called conspiracy theories by all main stream [sic] news media,” Greene wrote, linking to the post that falsely claimed a DNC staffer was the source for Wikileaks.
“Yet when you go to the website, it tells as if Seth Rich is speaking from the dead saying all the horrible things are true. That Hillary rigged the election against Bernie Sanders. That John Podesta had him murdered. That John Podesta is a pedophile and pizza gate [sic] is real,” Greene added in November 2017.
The Seth Rich conspiracy alleges that Rich, a 27-year-old DNC staffer murdered in the summer of 2016, was actually the target of an assassination ordered by Hillary Clinton and her allies, including John Podesta, because of the Russian-hacked DNC emails in 2016. Pizzagate and the Seth Rich conspiracies have been extensively debunked but continue to circulate in QAnon corners.
Greene has faced backlash among Republican leaders following a report in Politico that she made Islamophobic and bigoted remarks on social media. Greene said Muslims do not belong in government and that there is “an Islamic invasion into our government offices.” She said Black people “are held slaves to the Democratic Party” and said she would feel “proud” to see a Confederate monument if she were black. She falsely called George Soros, a Jewish billionaire and Democratic megadonor, a Nazi.
In another previously unreported social media post, Greene called for Pelosi to be impeached for “crimes of treason,” which she pointed out is “a crime punishable by death,” for supporting undocumented immigrants and not providing funding for Trump’s southern border wall.
This story has been updated with Greene’s Tuesday tweet about being invited to the White House and Greene’s response to the story.
