Letter from a Fulton County Processing Center
Georgia's most aggrieved man makes his case.
A heartfelt letter from Colton Moore
My Dear Fellow Georgians,
While confined in a narrow Fulton County booking room, having willfully arranged my presence at that exact location one year ago for what I can only describe as performance art of the highest constitutional order, I now feel compelled to respond to criticisms from the moderate wing of my party who question my methods. To them I say: You clearly haven't seen my fundraising numbers and social media clout now that I am running for Congress with this priceless mugshot.
Some call it “a stunt.” Some call it “a planned tantrum for social media.” I call it civil rights history, and history will remember it as I do: a watershed moment in American freedom.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote from a Birmingham jail cell, arrested for challenging segregation and the full machinery of statist racist oppression.
I, Colton Moore, was tackled and assaulted for attempting to attend a speech I had been explicitly told not to attend, after I had already called a dead man corrupt during a day honoring his service in front of his widow and children.
The parallels are obvious, assuming you’ve suffered a stroke, several concussions or some other cognitive trauma.
King wrote about his disappointment with the white moderate. I too am disappointed—with the Republican moderate who insists that shoving state troopers isn’t the most effective legislative strategy for our party. These moderates suggested I apologize for my remarks about former Speaker Ralston, as if the dead man’s grieving family in the gallery wanted “decency and respect” instead of “the truth.”
King faced beatings, bombings, and assassination attempts. I faced a $1,000 bond and the crushing emotional burden of being treated like someone who did something on purpose and then had to deal with it. Future generations will struggle to distinguish which struggle was more harrowing.
My anniversary commemoration comes on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and included a mugshot graphic comparing me to Donald Trump, because we were both processed at the same facility. Sure, the surrounding details of King’s ordeal, Trump’s arrest and my photo-op differ slightly, but why ruin good comparisons with facts?
Where King had Bull Connor, I had Speaker Jon Burns.
Where King had segregation, I had something far more insidious: being told “no.”
The Birmingham campaign required months of planning and training. Mine required receiving a letter telling me not to do something, then immediately organizing and planning and doing it anyway, loudly, with cameras rolling.
Some claim State Patrol said I “pushed into troopers multiple times.” That’s their perspective. My perspective is that the troopers got in the way of a TikTok in action.
Consider the brutal unseen sides of our oppression: King spent 11 days in jail. I spent several hours being processed before making bond and immediately visiting Emory Midtown Hospital, where I documented my swollen hand for social media with the dedication and seriousness of a war correspondent and the self-awareness to photograph from my good side. Suffering isn’t suffering until it’s shareable.
And let us examine the deeper constitutional crisis at play. King fought against laws that denied Black Americans the right to vote, to attend schools, to sit at lunch counters. I fought against a House Speaker's directive that denied me the right to attend one specific speech after I'd violated every possible norm of legislative decorum and basic human decency.
Both involved a man. Both involved state authority. Both involved consequences for defiant action. Therefore, obviously, they're basically identical. The math checks out.
Now, a year later, I’ve plastered this mugshot everywhere with all the subtlety of a 1980s used car dealership owner in a cheap suit with greasy hair who insists on being in his own bad commercials, because I am running for Congress to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene—a seat I believe requires someone who can become the story instead of doing the actual work
The 14th District faces real problems: healthcare, infrastructure, jobs. I offer something rarer: a proven record of getting kicked out of caucuses, banned from rooms, and starting fights that don’t need starting. Not every candidate can say they’ve offended veterans and widows simultaneously, then called it bravery.
My campaign material and every fundraising email says I’m “Trump’s #1 Defender” and that "no one has been more pro-Trump than I have." This is demonstrably true if you exclude everyone who worked in his administration, everyone who served in Congress during his presidency, everyone who campaigned for him before I did, and everyone who supported him without also getting themselves expelled from their own party's caucus.
The establishment punished me, you see. They banned me from the House chambers for my stirring eulogy of Speaker Ralston, in which I called him "one of the most corrupt Georgia leaders that we are ever going to see in my lifetime" while his grieving family watched from the gallery. Leadership requires difficult moments, like desecrating memorial events for personal publicity. viral moments and the algorithm requires sacrifice, folks.
Dr. King wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” and King said, “When you are right you cannot be too radical.”
I say, when you are Colton Moore, you cannot be too shameless and it is my belief that a ban from anywhere is a fundraising opportunity everywhere.
King challenged America to live up to its ideals.
I am challenging Northwest Georgia voters to send to Congress a man whose primary credential is getting arrested at the same processing center as President Trump and refusing to shut up about it since.
For the record, the comparison photo is NOT AI-generated. Some people saw this graphic and assumed it was satire. I have never been more serious about anything in my life. I really orchestrated all of this for the sole purpose of epic social media clout.
Dr. King and President Trump both built movements.
I built one hell of a photo-op and plan to ride it like a rented mule as long as I can or the voters see through it and I need a new con.
Yours in totally justified and not at all manufactured outrage,