The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Greene stripped of committee seats following House vote
U.S. representative suggested Sandy Hook shooting staged
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House of Representatives voted 230-199 to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who has endorsed conspiracy theories, including that the Sandy Hook school shooting was staged, of her committee memberships.
Greene spoke on House floor Thursday afternoon before the vote to publicly state she no longer believes that school shootings like those at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., or Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., were faked, nor does believe the QAnon conspiracy theory to be true. She said she regretted her words now that they have been turned on her.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., spoke with Greene this week about her past comments but decided not to remove her from her assignments on the Education and Labor and Budget committees. Democrats then forced a public vote to remove her. Eleven Republicans voted with Democrats to pull her from committees.
Rep. Jahana Hayes, whose district includes Newtown, circulated a letter last week requesting Greene be pulled off Education and Labor for her remarks on school shootings. More than 120 Democrats signed on.
On Thursday, in her first public disavowal of her remarks, Greene said “School shootings are absolutely real.”
“And every child that is lost, those families absolutely mourn it,” she said. “I understand how terrible it is because when I was 16 in 11th grade, my school was a gun-free school and one of my schoolmates brought guns to school and took our entire school hostage.”
Democrats are outraged by the litany of falsehoods endorsed by Greene and some hope to paint her as the new face of the Republican party. Many Republicans have condemned Greene’s remarks. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said her “loony lies” are a “cancer” on the GOP.
“Representative Greene has espoused opinions that have no place in our public discourse. It is our responsibility as Republicans to address these issues inside our own conference,” said Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who survived a challenge to her leadership Wednesday night. “This vote today sets a dangerous precedent for this institution that Democrats may regret when Republicans regain the majority." Some Democrats want to expel Greene from Congress for spreading and endorsing false and incendiary theories. U.S. Reps. John Larson, D-1, and Rosa DeLauro, D-3, signed onto a resolution to do so led by Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif. U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4, did not and his spokesman said Himes thought removing her committees was the appropriate remedy.
Advocates have latched onto the issue.
Po Murray, the chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance, called for Greene to be expelled from Congress, with a two-thirds majority vote.
On Wednesday night, Greene addressed the House Republican Caucus behind closed doors and admitted some of her past
In her public remarks, Greene said she became interested in QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory alleging the existence of a cabal of powerful individuals engaging in sex trafficking and plotting against President Donald Trump, at the end of 2017.
“I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true and I would ask questions about them and talk about them and that is absolutely what I regret because if it weren’t for the Facebook posts and comments that I liked in 2018, I wouldn’t be standing here and you couldn’t point a finger and accuse me of anything wrong,” Greene said.
Greene, 46, is a mother and Christian conservative whose family runs a construction company, Taylor Commercial, operating in 11 states. She described herself as a “very regular American,” Thursday, saying she never was arrested or did drugs, but did receive a few speeding tickets. She said she didn’t really trust the government before, but said she became interested in politics because of Trump, whom she strongly supports.
Greene previously liked a social media post that a “bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. She suggested maybe Jewish space lasers started the California wildfires in 2018. One of the Facebook posts she liked alleged the Sept. 11 terror attacks never happened. She said Thursday she knows 9/11 was real.
Previously, Greene said David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland shooting was “trained” “like a dog” to make scripted remarks about shootings. She confronted him outside the U.S. Capitol in 2019, called him a “coward” and suggested he wanted to confiscate the firearms of gun owners but couldn’t defend his policy stance, according to a video Greene posted to YouTube in January 2020.
“I know the fear that David Hogg had that day. I know the fear that these kids have... I truly believe that children at school should never be left unprotected,” Greene said Thursday. She endorses armed law enforcement guarding schools from attack.
Greene said Thursday her past remarks had been cherry-picked and distributed by the media to make her into something she is not.
“These were words of the past and these things do not represent me,” she said.