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House to Strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Committee Roles


Thu 04 Feb 2021 | 09:09 PM
Omnia Ahmed

The House will vote Thursday on a measure to strip Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee roles.

House Democrats set up the vote after first attempting to pressure Republicans to strip the Greene of committee assignments.

On Wednesday, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy released a statement calling the push by Democrats to take away the congresswoman's committee assignments a "partisan power grab."

The measure, the House will take up, calls for Greene to be removed from the House Education and Labor Committee and the Budget Committee "in light of conduct she has exhibited."

This decisive step could set a risky precedent as Democrats target a sitting member of the opposing party in Congress over views expressed prior to her serving as an elected official, that has the potential to someday be used against the party by Republicans.

On her part, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted on Thursday that she has no concerns about the precedent it could set.

"None, not at all. Not at all. If any of our members threatened the safety of other members we'd be the first ones to take them off of a committee. That's it," Pelosi said.

Greene has embraced the dangerous and debunked QAnon conspiracy theory, grew more intense in Congress in the wake of a report from CNN's KFile that she repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress.

The Georgia Republican has also faced backlash over recently resurfaced comments about the 2018 Parkland school shooting.

Students who survived the Parkland, Florida, shooting and families of the victims have called for Greene's resignation after comments surfaced that showed her agreeing with people who claimed the shooting was a "false flag" operation.

A spokesman for McCarthy called such comments from Greene "deeply disturbing" in a recent statement and McCarthy attempted to distance Republicans from her rhetoric in his statement on Wednesday.

"Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference,” he said. “I condemn those comments unequivocally. I condemned them in the past. I continue to condemn them today. This House condemned QAnon last Congress and continues to do so today."

Nonetheless, the California Republican went on to accuse Democrats of pisiveness, saying that "the Democrats are choosing to raise the temperature by taking the unprecedented step to further their partisan power grab regarding the committee assignments of the other party."

Pelosi criticized House Republicans for failing to punish Greene, saying on Thursday ahead of the vote, "I remain profoundly concerned about House Republican leadership acceptance of extreme conspiracy theorists."

She went on to say: "particularly disturbing is their eagerness to reward a QAnon adherent, a 9/11 truther, a harasser of child survivors of school shootings and to give them valued committee positions, including, who could imagine they would put such a person on the education committee."

Greene has faced pushback from some prominent congressional Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who slammed her embrace of "loony lies and conspiracy theories." without naming the congresswoman, in a short but pointed statement Monday night.

Greene has been publicly unapologetic and defiant in the face of the bitter criticism.

She addressed the controversy during a closed-door meeting of the House GOP conference on Wednesday evening, noting that her social media posts do not reflect who she is as a person.

Furthermore; she announced on Saturday that she had spoken with former President Donald Trump and said she is "so grateful for (Trump's) support," adding, "More importantly the people of this country are absolutely 100% loyal to him because he is 100% loyal to the people and America First."