WASHINGTON – Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has used her new perch on the House Oversight Committee to hold a pity party for the mass rioters who destroyed the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
During a committee meeting on Tuesday, Greene compared the killing of police officer Tire Nichols during a traffic stop in Memphis, Tennessee, to the police shooting of Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt as she tried to enter an inner chamber of the Capitol.
Rep. Jasmine Crocket (D-Texas) has spoken out against the Republican decision to dissolve the oversight subcommittee focused on civil rights, mentioning the death of Nichols as something the subcommittee could investigate.
“Miss Crockett, I agree with you about Tyree Nichols dying,” Greene said. “I watched the video, and it was tragic and very difficult to watch.”
But Memphis is a city controlled by Democrats, Greene said, and the officer who beat Nichols was Black, so “it’s not an issue of racism or anything like that,” he said.
“But I also want to share something that I want you to share with me: There is a woman in this room whose daughter was killed on January 6, Ashli Babbitt,” said Greene, who invited Babbitt’s mother to attend the event. hearing.
“As a matter of fact, no one cares about the person who shot and killed them. And no one in this Congress is really addressing the issue,” Greene said. “And I believe that there will be a lot of people coming to the Capitol on January 6th, whose civil rights and liberties have been severely violated.”
The Capitol Police and the Justice Department both cleared the officers who shot Babbitt. He had tried to climb through the smashed window from the doorway to the Speaker’s Lobby just outside the House chamber. The police had barricaded the door to let the rioters out.
“The actions of officers in this case could have saved Members and staff from serious injury and possibly death from the many rioters who forced their way into the US Capitol and into the House Chamber where Members and staff were away,” Capitol. The police said after completing the review in August 2021.
The Justice Department said in April 2021 that the investigation “did not reveal evidence to establish that, when the officer fired the single shot at Ms. Babbitt, the officer did not believe it was necessary in self-defense or in defense of the Congressman and others who evacuated the Chamber House.
Five Memphis police officers have been charged with manslaughter for beating Nichols minutes after a standoff earlier this month, a situation not unlike the mob siege at the Capitol.
Greene is a conspiracy theorist who was blocked by Democrats from serving on committees in Congress in the past because of past threatening comments about fellow lawmakers. He and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) have claimed supporters of Donald Trump who attacked the Capitol have been deceived by secret FBI agents rather than incited to violence by Trump’s election lies.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said last year Greene could serve on the committee if Republicans win the House, and Greene pushed for a seat on the oversight committee so he could highlight the supposed mistreatment of rioters like Babbitt.
Greene told HuffPost last year that Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the second-ranking Republican in the House, said he would support an oversight committee investigation of “political prisoners” held in DC prisons.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) Noncommittal on investigating the condition of the Capitol rioters.
“We look into a lot of things that sometimes they can get to the next level of investigation, and sometimes we just feel we don’t feel we’ve got enough to go to the investigation,” Comer told HuffPost in November. “So if it’s important to them, then I’m sure they’ll look at it.”