Expulsion from Congress was not part of The Plan.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) convinced voters in Georgia’s northwest corner to send her to Washington, D.C. to expose the “Democrat” cannibal-pedophile ring plotting to overthrow the reign of god-king Donald Trump. (Greene may not have put that in campaign ads.) With Trump tweets no longer dominating headlines, reporters have more bandwidth for examining Greene’s backstory. It is not pretty.
Only three weeks post-insurrection, the freshman congresswoman from QAnon will face a resolution from Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) to expel her over “numerous reports revealing her repeated endorsements of sedition, domestic terrorism, and political violence“:
“As if it weren’t enough to amplify conspiracy theories that the September 11attacks were an inside job and the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was staged, a string of recent media reports has now confirmed that Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene had previously supported social media posts calling for political violence against the Speaker of the House, members of Congress, and former President Barack Obama,” said Congressman Gomez. “Such advocacy for extremism and sedition not only demands her immediate expulsion from Congress, but it also merits strong and clear condemnation from all of her Republican colleagues, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Her very presence in office represents a direct threat against the elected officials and staff who serve our government, and it is with their safety in mind, as well as the security of institutions and public servants across our country, that I call on my House colleagues to support my resolution to immediately remove Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from this legislative body.”
Five are dead and nearly 140 Capitol Police officers were injured in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that terrorized members of Congress and threatened their lives. Police union spokesman, Gus Papathanasiou, chairman of the Capitol Police Labor Committee, said in a Wednesday statement that some officers sustained brain injuries. Another “cracked two ribs and smashed two spinal discs, one will likely lose an eye, and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake,” NBC News reports.
Memories are fresh and repairs to the Capitol ongoing. So the numerous reports Gomez referenced stung, including this one Tuesday from CNN:
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress, a CNN KFile review of hundreds of posts and comments from Greene’s Facebook page shows.
Greene, who represents Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, frequently posted far-right extremist and debunked conspiracy theories on her page, including the baseless QAnon conspiracy which casts former President Donald Trump in an imagined battle against a sinister cabal of Democrats and celebrities who abuse children.
In one post, from January 2019, Greene liked a comment that said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In other posts, Greene liked comments about executing FBI agents who, in her eyes, were part of the “deep state” working against Trump.
Greene is nothing if not armed and colorful.
AMERICAblog’s John Aravosis assembled a lengthy thread chronicling Greene’s loopy beliefs. He has more at CyberDisobedience.
It is not illegal to write for a conspiracy website. Nor is it a disqualification for serving in public office. Nor is it illegal to be mentally unstable or to hold offbeat, racist or insane views. Sixty-three million Americans voted for a Republican presidential candidate holding them in 2016, and 74 million voted (and failed) to reelect Trump in 2020.
But on Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security issued an alert that “some ideologically-motivated violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition … could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence” between now and the end of April.
Also on Wednesday, federal prosecutors filed charges against an alleged Trump extremist, Ian Benjamin Rogers of Napa County, Calif., for building pipe bombs perhaps meant for attacks against “California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the San Francisco Bay Area headquarters of social media giants Twitter and Facebook.” (In August 2019, a court sentenced Florida man Cesar Sayoc, 57, to 20 years in prison for sending over a dozen pipe bombs to prominent Trump critics in late 2018.)
And on Tuesday, federal authorities arrested another California man, Robert Lemke, 35, accusing him of making texted threats against Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and his family over his support for Joe Biden. “Stop telling lies; Biden did not win, he will not be president,” read one message.
Being cosy with the sort of people prone to political violence could prove unhealthy for Greene’s political future, and not in a violent way.