A running list of Marjorie Taylor Greene's controversies
Exploring the Georgia Republican's long history of incendiary behavior
Since her election to the House of Representatives in 2020, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has courted one controversy after another with her status as a high-profile supporter of President Trump often shielding her from consequences. House Democrats voted to remove her from her committee assignments in 2021 after some of her past rhetoric and associations were exposed by reporters. Now in her third term in the House, Greene's committee assignments were restored after Republicans won the House in the 2022 midterm elections.
The scandals have not bothered voters in her district. While she drew a primary challenger in 2022, Greene ran unopposed in the 2024 GOP primary and was reelected in the 2024 general election by nearly 30 points. She is now a major figure in Republican politics, even after her push to oust Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) failed in May 2024. Greene's history of fiery behavior long predates her time in Congress, and includes extra-marital affairs, conspiracy theorizing and threats of violence against leading Democrats.
In 2012, Greene reportedly had affairs with two men at the CrossFit gym where she was employed in Alpharetta, Georgia, "one with a tantric sex guru named Craig Ivey, and another with a gym manager named Justin Tway," said the Independent. She filed for divorce from her husband, Perry, that year but the couple got back together before finalizing a divorce in December 2022. Greene denied the allegations. The episode did not prevent Greene from publicly accusing Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) of having an affair with a Chinese spy during a House Homeland Security committee meeting on April 25, 2023. Republicans had hoped to land blows against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, whom they would later impeach, but "Greene's performance sidetracked that conversation," said Fox News.
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The QAnon conspiracy theory held that an "anonymous person called Q was revealing secrets about a child trafficking ring orchestrated by Democrats and global elites," said The Washington Post. Prior to her election to Congress, Greene contributed to the extremist website American Truth Seekers, where she promoted QAnon beliefs. She also "further pushed conspiracy theories on her Facebook page," including the idea that the 2019 mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 51 people was a false-flag operation designed to undermine American gun rights, said Rolling Stone. Greene also used social media to back conspiracy theories about 9/11 as well as "casting doubt on school shootings," said The Washington Post. "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," said Greene when her past behavior caused Democrats to strip her of her committee assignments in February, 2021.
Blamed California wildfires on space lasers
In a 2018 Facebook post written before her election to Congress, Greene speculated that the deadly Camp Fire was deliberately sparked by Jewish elites in cahoots with the governor of California and power company PG&E to clear land for a high-speed rail project. Her conclusions were based on the observation that "oddly there are all these people who have said they saw what looked like lasers or blue beams causing the fires," leading many observers to claim that Greene believed in "Jewish space lasers." Critics blasted the ludicrous ideas in her post. "Aren't there easier ways to get your rail stations approved by the state legislature?" said Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine. Greene's post was not just absurd but also anti-semitic because "people have used claims that this one particular wealthy family controls the world to cast aspersions on Jews in general" for centuries, said Zack Beauchamp at Vox.
On May 20, 2021, during an interview with David Brody of the far-right news network Real America Voice, Greene complained about the requirement to wear masks during House proceedings. Forcing Jews to wear gold stars and sending them by rail to concentration camps "is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about," said Greene. She later apologized, saying "there are words that I have said, remarks that I have made, that I know are offensive, and for that, I want to apologize." She continued to use analogies to compare vaccine mandates to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. "People have a choice, they don't need your medical brown shirts showing up at their door ordering vaccinations," said Greene in a July 6, 2021, post at X.
Following President Donald Trump's defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Greene quickly embraced his lies about Democrats using fraud to change the outcome. "I will not certify a stolen election," she wrote in a January 3, 2021, tweet. There remains no credible evidence that there was systematic fraud in the 2020 election. "Biden won the election, fairly and legally," said CNN.
Greene was one of the 139 House Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election during the counting of Electoral Votes on January 6, 2021, a process which was interrupted by the Capitol insurrection. Greene continued to insist that the 2020 election was stolen, and prior to the 2024 election claimed in an interview with far-right extremist Alex Jones that voting machines were switching early votes in Georgia. After Trump's victory in 2024, she did not make any further accusations of election fraud.
Blamed the January 6, 2021, insurrection on Black Lives Matter and Antifa
Greene has vacillated between blaming the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot on left-wing agitators and complaining about how Black Lives Matter protesters allegedly got away with violence during the summer of 2020. Initially, she scoffed at the idea that Trump supporters could really have been behind the riot. "If the #Jan6 organizers were Trump supporters, then why did they attack us while we were objecting to electoral college votes for Joe Biden?" she said in a February 9, 2021, post on X. Greene still sometimes groundlessly blames the insurrection on left-wing agitators. "I fully believe they were Antifa/BLM [Black Lives Matter] rioters," said Greene in a November 2023 appearance on Triggered, Donald Trump, Jr.'s podcast.
Endorsed violence against Democrats
In social media posts prior to her election to Congress, Greene repeatedly endorsed violence against prominent Democratic officials, including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In one video posted to Facebook in 2019, Greene accused Pelosi of treason, which is "a crime punishable by death," said Greene. In another 2020 Facebook post prior to her election, she posted a picture of herself holding an assault rifle next to pictures of Reps. Rashida Tlaib (R-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-MInn.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) with the caption "Squad's Worst Nightmare." That history of violent rhetoric and imagery was part of the reason Democrats voted to remove her from committees in 2021.
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