Marjorie Taylor Greene's Defense of Donald Trump Has One Big Problem

MAGA Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has spoken out against Fani Willis, the Georgia district attorney who has indicted Donald Trump and 18 others for conspiring to overturn his 2020 defeat in the state. Greene said the prosecutor should be going after rapists instead of the former president.

The only problem there is that her plea could potentially include Trump, however unlikely. The former president was found by a Manhattan jury to have sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s, despite the fact that Carroll failed to prove that she was "raped" within the meaning of the New York penal law.

However, a New York judge later dismissed a counterclaim by Trump against Carroll when she repeated the allegation that Trump raped her, saying that her words were "substantially true."

"Mr Trump in fact did 'rape' Ms Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York penal law," Lewis A. Kaplan wrote, setting out in detail why it could be said in common parlance that Trump "raped" her. However, there is no suggestion that Trump could face criminal charges over the incident.

Newsweek contacted Greene's spokesperson for comment by email on Wednesday.

On Monday, Trump was among a total of 19 defendants charged by an Atlanta grand jury in Georgia with a slew of crimes—including racketeering, perjury, forgery, false statements, violating the oath of a public officer, and other offenses—aimed at overturning the result of the 2020 presidential election in the state. Trump has long denied any wrongdoing in connection with Willis' probe.

"A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete & will be presented by me at a major News Conference at 11:00 A.M. on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey," Trump wrote on his social-media platform Truth Social.

He added: "Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others - There will be a complete EXONERATION! They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!"

Talking with Newsmax host Rob Schmitt on his show Rob Schmitt Tonight on Tuesday, Greene said that Georgia has urgent crimes that Willis should address instead of going after Trump.

"I want to tell you something about Atlanta, Rob, and it's very important for people to know," Greene said. "Atlanta has some of the highest crime in the country. Murder, rape, carjacking. And the state of Georgia is one of the worst states in the country for child sex trafficking," she said.

NeighborhoodScout, a website advising investors on the state of the real estate market, has put Atlanta in its list of the 100 most dangerous cities in the nation, with a crime rate of 50 per 1,000 residents. People living in Atlanta have a one-in-20 chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime, and over 94 percent of the communities within Georgia have a lower crime rate than Atlanta.

Despite recognising the high crime rate in Atlanta, the city still features at the bottom of NeighborhoodScout's list, in the 94th position.

"Fani Willis should be going after child sex predators and traffickers. Fani Willis should be going after murderers, rapists, car thieves," Greene added.

Trump was involved in a Manhattan criminal case that many considered, in fact, a rape case. Carroll accused the former president of sexually assaulting her during an encounter in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, and later defaming her by calling her a liar when she came out with the story.

In May, Trump was found guilty of sexually abusing and defaming Carroll, though the jury could not determine that the former president had raped her.

The verdict became a talking point for Trump and his lawyers, who said that Carroll defamed the former president when saying he raped her. But Lewis A. Kaplan, a judge in New York, dismissed Trump's counterclaim, and added that, when Carroll said he raped her, her words were substantially true.

"The jury [...] was instructed that it could find that Mr Trump 'raped' Ms Carroll only if it found that he forcibly penetrated Ms Carroll's vagina with his penis," Kaplan wrote in his dismissal of Trump's defamation counterclaim.

"It could not find that he 'raped' her if it determined that Mr Trump forcibly penetrated Ms Carroll's private sexual parts with his fingers—which commonly is considered 'rape' in other contexts—because the New York penal law definition of rape is limited to penile penetration."

However, the jury still found that Trump "raped" Carroll as we commonly understand the term, Kaplan said in July.

"As the court explained in its recent decision denying Mr Trump's motion for a new trial on damages and other relief [...] based on all of the evidence at trial and the jury's verdict as a whole, the jury's finding that Mr Trump 'sexually abused' Ms Carroll implicitly determined that he forcibly penetrated her digitally—in other words, that Mr Trump in fact did 'rape' Ms Carroll as that term commonly is used and understood in contexts outside of the New York penal law."

Both Schmitt and Greene said that the latest indictment against Trump is politically motivated, sharing the same narrative spread by the former president. After the indictment on Monday, Trump wrote that the case was part of a political "witch hunt" against him.

"This is something that we expect in Third World countries, that we expect in communist regimes, but this is what we're seeing in America today," Greene said.

Despite his legal troubles—which now include a total of four indictments—Trump remains far ahead of any other Republican candidates in the 2024 presidential election, according to the latest polling. FiveThirtyEight reports that, as of August 15, Trump had 52.7 percent of the vote, while rival Ron DeSantis trailed him with 14.8 percent of the vote.