WASHINGTON ― Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is already utilizing her new perch on the Home Oversight Committee to host a pity social gathering for the mob rioters who ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Throughout a committee assembly on Tuesday, Greene in contrast the police killing of Tyre Nichols throughout a visitors cease in Memphis, Tennessee, to the police capturing of Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt as she tried to interrupt into an inside room of the Capitol.
Rep. Jasmine Crocket (D-Texas) had spoken out towards Republicans’ determination to disband an oversight subcommittee targeted on civil rights, mentioning Nichols’ demise as one thing the subcommittee might need investigated.
“Miss Crockett, I do agree with you about Tyree Nichols’ demise,” Greene mentioned. “I watched the video, and it was tragic and very troublesome to observe.”
However Memphis is a metropolis managed by Democrats, Greene mentioned, and the officers who beat Nichols had been Black, so it “isn’t a problem of racism or something like that,” she mentioned.
“However I’d prefer to additionally level one thing that I’d hope you share with me: There’s a girl on this room whose daughter was murdered on Jan. 6, Ashli Babbitt,” Greene continued, having apparently invited Babbitt’s mom to attend the listening to.
“As a matter of reality, nobody has cared about the person who shot and killed her. And nobody on this Congress has actually addressed that concern,” Greene mentioned. “And I imagine that there are various folks that got here into the Capitol on Jan. 6, whose civil rights and liberties are being violated closely.”
The Capitol Police and the Justice Division each cleared the officer who shot Babbitt. She had been attempting to climb via the smashed window of a doorway to the Speaker’s Foyer simply exterior the Home chamber. Police had barricaded the door to maintain the rioters out.
“The actions of the officer on this case doubtlessly saved Members and employees from critical harm and doable demise from a big crowd of rioters who pressured their method into the U.S. Capitol and to the Home Chamber the place Members and employees had been steps away,” the Capitol Police mentioned after finishing a evaluate in August 2021.
The Justice Division mentioned in April 2021 its investigation “revealed no proof to ascertain that, on the time the officer fired a single shot at Ms. Babbitt, the officer didn’t moderately imagine that it was obligatory to take action in self-defense or in protection of the Members of Congress and others evacuating the Home Chamber.”
5 Memphis cops had been charged with homicide for beating Nichols for a number of minutes after a visitors cease earlier this month, a scenario not remotely just like the mob siege of the Capitol.
Greene is a conspiracy theorist whom Democrats blocked from serving on committees within the earlier Congress due to her previous threatening commentary about her fellow lawmakers. She and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) have claimed the Donald Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol had been manipulated by secret FBI brokers reasonably than incited to violence by Trump’s election lies.
Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) mentioned final yr Greene might serve on committees if Republicans received the Home, and Greene pushed for a seat on the oversight committee in order that she might spotlight the supposed mistreatment of rioters like Babbitt.
Greene informed HuffPost final yr that Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the second-ranking Republican within the Home, informed her he would assist an oversight committee investigation of “political prisoners” held at D.C. jail.
Home Oversight chair James Comer (R-Ky.) was noncommittal about investigating the plight of Capitol rioters.
“We glance into quite a lot of issues that generally they might get to the following stage of an investigation, and generally we simply really feel we don’t really feel like we’ve bought sufficient to go to an investigation,” Comer informed HuffPost in November. “So if that’s necessary to her, then that’s one thing that I’m certain that we’ll have a look at.”