'One of the nuttier things I've seen': MAGA civil war erupts in Georgia

According to a lawsuit filed in August by three lawyers who worked with him, Wood in late 2019 began acting erratically, making “abusive, incoherent phone calls, voicemails, texts, and emails ... All of these erratic communications have a few things in common: most of these emails profess that God or the Almighty was commanding his actions; many were stating his refusal to pay the Plaintiffs ‘one thin dime;’ and virtually all were abusive.”

The lawsuit alleges Wood’s behavior “continued to deteriorate, including assault and battery” on two of them, though “there was essentially no reason whatsoever for the attack, and Defendant Wood later acknowledged and apologized for this violence.”

Wood, however, denied the claims, stating on Twitter that it was a “shakedown effort.”

“These young lawyers have chosen to willingly engage in a disgraceful and unprofessional effort to publicly attack me by including irrelevant, out-of-context private messages I sent to them in the midst of a difficult time in my personal life arising primarily from my family’s reaction to my faith in Jesus Christ," Wood wrote.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who helped build the modern Republican Party in Georgia, theorized the lawyers were whipping up conservatives because “they understand that if they’re out there saying more and more radical things, they’ll get more publicity.”