A defiant Marjorie Taylor Greene says she’d be ‘wasting my time’ on committees

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene told reporters here on Friday that now that she’s lost her committee assignments, she has more time to push a pro-Trump agenda.

The House voted late Thursday 230-199 to remove the Georgia Republican from two committee seats she had been assigned by GOP leaders upon arriving in Washington as a freshman —Education and Labor, and Budget. Eleven Republicans joined Democrats in the vote.

Reporting from several outlets unearthed recent social media posts where Greene called for the assassination of Democratic leaders and expressed support for the baseless conspiracy group QAnon. Greene also spread false theories that the deadly mass school shooting in Parkland, Fla., was staged, outraging Democrats and teachers unions.

On the day after the vote, she was unapologetic.

“If I was on a committee I would be wasting my time,” she said at a press conference on the Capitol grounds. “Now I have a lot of free time on my hands so that I can talk to more people, and build a huge amount of support.”

It’s unclear how much policy Greene wanted to tackle in Congress, but even without committee assignments she still retains a congressional staff of eight.

She employs a chief of staff, two communications aides, two staff assistants, one scheduler, one legislative assistant and a legislative director, according to LegiStorm, a site that tracks the staff members of lawmakers.

She has not cosponsored any measures yet and the only piece of legislation she has sponsored is a resolution to impeach President Joe Biden. There are no co-sponsors on that resolution.

Her district nearly aligns with the national average for poverty with 12% of people living below the poverty line, according to Census data. About 82% finish high school and 18% go on to earn a bachelor’s degree or higher.

She’s used Democrats’ push to remove her from her seats as an opportunity to generate campaign donations. Within this week she’s raised $175,000, she has tweeted.

A video also surfaced of her harassing David Hogg, a gun control advocate and student who survived the 2018 deadly mass school shooting in Parkland, where 17 people were killed.

At the press conference, she sought to justify her confrontation with Hogg, saying that he was an adult and that she, too, lived through a similar experience, a reference to a 1990 hostage situation at a Forsyth County high school.

On Thursday on the House floor, she also referenced the incident and said that the “entire school” was taken hostage.

But the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that she was not one of the hostages in that school lockdown after the newspaper interviewed teachers, students and administrative staff who were at the school at the time of the situation. The newspaper said that an armed student held hostages taken from two classrooms.

Greene on Friday also delivered a warning for the 11 Republicans who voted with Democrats to remove her from her committee assignments. She said they would likely face political repercussions, as her views align with those of President Donald Trump.

She said that their decision to vote against her could prevent Republicans from retaking the House in 2022.

“The party is his,” Greene said of Trump. “It doesn’t belong to anyone else.”

Trump carried Georgia’s 14th Congressional District with 75% of the vote in 2016.