Daily Beast: MAGA Shit Fight May Land Marjorie Taylor Greene in Legal Hot Water

Two MAGA world luminaries who have spent the better part of a year promoting some of the same election conspiracy theories—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and QAnon-aligned lawyer Lin Wood—are now pitted against each other in a dispute that could put Greene on the wrong side of a campaign finance violation.

Wood, the Georgia defamation lawyer who has floated some of the fringiest of fringe theories about ex-President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, posted a note on the Telegram messaging app over the weekend blasting Greene and claiming she still owed him for previous legal work.

But it turns out that Wood was not representing his former ally in her personal capacity. Instead, his services went to Greene’s campaign committee as it fought two defamation disputes. Worse still for Greene is Wood’s claim that the Greene campaign has never paid him, raising a number of questions about the legality of their arrangement.

A spokesperson for Greene, who handles communications for her congressional office and her campaign, did not offer comment.

Four campaign finance experts consulted for this article said Greene’s candidate committee—Greene for Congress—appears at minimum to have violated federal financial reporting laws. They also raised concerns about illegal corporate and in-kind contributions, with some experts pointing to two possibilities in other legal realms: breach of contract, and, in a word, “theft,” if Wood were to take an austere line in state court.

Paul Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at the campaign finance watchdog group Common Cause, agreed that the outstanding invoice could be considered an unreported debt. But he also offered a more pointed analysis.

“Sounds as though Marjorie Taylor Greene has received and failed to report an illegal contribution,” Ryan said.

In the campaign finance world, a “contribution” is not just money—it’s anything of value for the purpose of influencing an election. Goods and services, such as legal work, are considered “in-kind contributions,” and campaigns must either report receiving them or pay for them outright.

In this case, Ryan observed, it appears neither of those things happened.

“This could have gone a different way: A lawyer provides services, invoices the candidate for those services, and then the candidate pays for them,” Ryan said. “But it didn’t go that way here, and what we see is unpaid legal services that amount to an illegal contribution.”

Ryan added that the bottom line was that, “if a candidate pays, it’s fine; if not, it’s an in-kind contribution.”

Part of the problem in this case is that Wood had already donated the maximum allowable amount to Greene before he billed her, so she would not be allowed to accept his in-kind services for free. The in-kind contribution would therefore be illegal, the campaign finance experts said. And, as Ryan and Kappel both pointed out, because Wood’s law firm is not a partnership, such a contribution would appear to qualify as a corporate gift to the candidate, which is also impermissible.