Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) was fact-checked by the head of the US Border Patrol after she claimed agents had found an “explosion” near the southern border in January.
Greene highlighted her claim about this so-called threat in questions to Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz during a Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday in Texas. However, Ortiz did not elaborate on that when he spoke to lawmakers. After that, Greene repeated his statement through tweetsalong with images of the alleged device, accusing the “Cartel” of “planting bombs” and “killing Americans every day through drugs and crime.”
Fox News national reporter Bill Melugin share tweets, adding that he had spoken with a “high-level CBP source” who said the object was fake. “While it looks nefarious, I’m told it doesn’t contain explosives,” he tweeted.
Not long after, Ortiz tweeted.
“Today, I testified before the Homeland Security Committee & charged that Agents found an explosive device near the border,” he wrote, referring to the same image Greene posted. “During the Jan. briefing, Leadership was notified that Agents found a ball of duct tape filled with sand that was not considered a threat to agents/the public.”
Greene refused to back downinsisted that the unnamed Border Patrol agent had told him to use it.
“I’m just explaining what I said today,” he said.
When contacted by HuffPost for comment, a spokesperson for Greene did not elaborate on Greene’s sources or provide evidence, instead writing: “Don’t be a state-sponsored propagandist.”
Greene, an anti-immigration hardliner, has lambasted the Biden administration for undocumented U.S. border crossings from Mexico, often using false numbers. Last month, he faced ridicule after he accused the government of allowing “6 billion” people to cross into the U.S. illegally (He later updated that number to 6 million — which is still questionable.)
Last week, he used the deaths of two brothers who died from fentanyl poisoning to attack the Biden administration for “refusal to secure the border and stop the Cartel [sic] of killing Americans every day. When fact-checkers pointed out that those people died in 2020, when Donald Trump, not Biden, was president, Greene’s spokeswoman said that many people died from drugs under Biden and “do you think he thinks that’s bullshit you? fact check?’
Greene has also leaned into the controversial white supremacy “invasion” and
The “replacement” of language in him pushes for border security. On Wednesday, he tweeted chart about meeting illegal migrants, wrote: “We don’t know who or what will come to the Southern border. But we do know that we are being systematically and deliberately changed by Joe Biden and the Democrats’ open border policy.