Marjorie Taylor Greene could face more punishment for backing violent threats

Democrats are not done trying to hold Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) accountable for her bevy of violent, racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, and conspiratorial rhetoric, which members of Congress say helped incite the deadly insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-CA) said on Friday that he is still pushing forward with his bill to expel Greene from Congress, saying that Thursday’s move to remove Greene from her committees was just a “first step.”

“If you look at her behavior and comments — in the context of what had been going on in the country before Nov. 3, then after the elections, and finally during and after the insurrection that occurred on Jan. 6 — removing her from the committees is not enough,” Gomez wrote in an NBC News op-ed published Friday morning.

Gomez announced on Jan. 27 that he was introducing a bill to expel Greene from Congress, saying in a statement that Greene’s “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.”

McConnell condemned Greene, but McCarthy refused to punish her — pretending not to know about the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory Greene has pushed, even after he acknowledged the problem it posed to the party in August of 2020.

McCarthy’s refusal to act led House Democrats to push forward with a bill to remove Greene from her committees. That bill passed Thursday night with 230 votes. However, just 11 of those votes were from GOP lawmakers, with 199 others voting against Greene’s removal from her committee assignments.

Gomez called Greene’s removal from her committees a “great first step,” but said Greene still “remains a danger to her colleagues in the House and to the staff at the Capitol.”

“It’s clear that, as long as she’s in office, Rep. Greene can and will try to influence her hardest, most hard-core supporters — especially the ones that believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory, the white supremacist organizations like the Three Percenters — to intimidate other lawmakers,” Gomez wrote in the NBC News op-ed. “This is not only a concern we had in the past; it is clearly one we need to continue to have moving forward in the future.”

Democrats already plan to try to use Greene against Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched an ad campaign this week tying vulnerable House Republicans to Greene, her violent rhetoric, and the insurrection at the Capitol.

The ad campaign targeted eight GOP lawmakers, including McCarthy himself. Three of those lawmakers targeted by the ads — Reps. Young Kim of California, Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida, and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania — were part of the 11 Republicans who voted to remove Greene from her committees. It’s a sign that those lawmakers view Greene as a political liability.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.