Jake Markoff
News Editor

On Thursday, February 4 Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was stripped of her congressional committee assignments by a majority vote in the House. Rep. Greene drew the ire of her colleagues and the public when conspiratorial statements she made previously on social media surfaced. House Democrats instigated a hearing to have her removed from her position on two committees, an education, and a budget committee. With a vote of 230-199 where 11 republicans voted to remove her the resolution passed.

Her controversial statements were related to QAnon and claiming that school shootings like Sandy Hook and Parkland were hoaxes designed to strengthen gun control laws. In addition, further statements surfaced where Rep. Greene suggested that 9/11 was a conspiracy and that the 2018 California wildfires were orchestrated by the Rothschilds with a space laser. The Rothschilds have been a common target for anti-Semitic conspiracy theories since the 19th century.

Rep. Greene was allowed to defend herself during the hearing. Wearing a facemask that read “free speech” her testimony was broadcasted to the entire country. She apologized for her past statements and claimed that she distrusted the government when QAnon conspiracies drew her attention, but that she stepped away from Q when she found evidence of “misinformation, lies and things that weren’t true.” She said that “9/11 absolutely happened… I do not believe that it’s fake.” Similarly, she said that “School shootings are absolutely real.”

“These are words of the past. These things do not represent me,” she said.

Throughout the proceedings more inflammatory statements and footage surfaced and circulated on social media. A video of her harassing David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting, in which she called him a coward and claimed she had her gun on her, in particular, drew a lot of criticism. She liked Facebook posts that called for Nancy Pelosi to get “a bullet to the head,” and another one calling for Barack Obama to be hanged. Despite claiming to leave QAnon in 2018 she circulated Q conspiracies on social media as soon as 2019 when she spread the idea that Ruth Bater Ginsberg had died and was being played by a body double. In December 2020, she tweeted that QAnon was “exposing the truth.”

When pushed on these particular cases later in the week she said she was “sorry for saying all those things that are wrong and offensive.” She did, however, refuse to apologize for her statements made to David Hogg saying, “He was an adult when I spoke to him.”

The Democratic members of Congress didn’t find her apology compelling, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer went as far as to say, “I have never encountered a situation like the one before us now, where a member has made such vile and hurtful statements, engaged in the harassment of colleagues and expressed support for political violence.”

Rep. Greene maintains her position as a representative of Georgia, but after the ruling she claims that Democrats “stripped [her] district of their voice.” In addition, she responded by tweeting, “I woke up early this morning literally laughing thinking about what a bunch of morons the Democrats (+11) are for giving some one like me free time.”