Crenshaw slams Freedom Caucus members as ‘grifters in our midst’

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw slammed members of the conservative Freedom Caucus as “performance artists” and “grifters” during an event with Texas GOP congressional candidates over the weekend.

“We have grifters in our midst,” the Houston Republican said in a video clip from the event that was posted on social media. “I mean in the conservative movement. Lie after lie after lie, because they know something psychologically about the conservative heart — we’re worried about what people are going to do to us, what they’re going to infringe upon us.”

Crenshaw did not call any members out by name in the clip, which was posted to Twitter by Ron Filipkowski, a Florida attorney and Republican who drew attention for backing President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. The video appears to be taken from a Texas Liberty Alliance event in Cypress on Sunday.

Crenshaw directed his criticism at “everybody in the Freedom Caucus — all of them.”

The caucus is a group of conservative House members that includes several fellow Texas Republicans: Reps. Louie Gohmert of Tyler, Chip Roy of Austin, Randy Weber of Friendswood and Michael Cloud of Victoria. It also includes several high-profile GOP members and some of former President Donald Trump’s closest allies, including U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida.

Crenshaw called them “performance artists” who “get all the attention, they’re the ones you think are more conservative because they know how to say slogans real well,” he said. “They know how to recite the lines that they know our voters want to hear.”

It’s not the first time Crenshaw has criticized more conservative members of Congress and Trump loyalists within the GOP. Earlier this year, he slammed Republicans who he said helped instigate the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol.

“All of the members who called for everyone to come and fight and make their last stand, all of those members were scattered like cowards while the Capitol Police had to do the fighting,” Crenshaw said at the time. “These people have been lied to en masse by the millions in the sense that they were led to believe Jan. 6 was anything but a political performance for a few opportunistic politicians to give a five-minute speech. That is all that it ever was. People were lied to.”

Gohmert, Roy, Weber and Cloud did not respond to requests for comment.