Recently reelected 14th District U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said in a statement that she was joking when she told the New York Young Republican Club that pro-Trump mobs would have been armed if she had led the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021.
“The White House needs to learn how sarcasm works,” Greene said in a statement. “My comments were making fun of Joe Biden and the Democrats, who have continuously made me a political target since Jan. 6.”
The congressional representative for the majority of Northwest Georgia is in demand at speaking engagements across the country. She makes this statement in a video of the event posted online:
“I come to Washington, I swear in on Jan. 3, I get accused of giving insurrection tours — which I thought was hilarious because I couldn’t even find the bathroom in the Capitol. True story,” Greene said. “Then Jan. 6 happens, and next thing you know, I organized the whole thing along with Steve Bannon here. And I gotta tell you something: If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would have been armed. Yeah. See, that’s the whole joke isn’t it?”
“They say that whole thing was planned and I’m like ‘are you kidding me,’” she continued. “A bunch of conservatives, Second Amendment supporters, went in the Capitol without guns and they think we organized that? I don’t think so.”
Bannon, currently under felony indictment for money laundering, conspiracy and scheme to defraud charges, was also in the crowd during that event.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates denounced Greene’s remarks in a statement released Monday.
“It goes against our fundamental values as a country for a Member of Congress to wish that the carnage of January 6th had been even worse, and to boast that she would have succeeded in an armed insurrection against the United States government,” Bates said in the statement. “This violent rhetoric is a slap in the face to the Capitol Police, the DC Metropolitan Police, the National Guard, and the families who lost loved ones as a result of the attack on the Capitol.”
Greene has regularly defended those accused in the Jan. 6 attack and has repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the event. She has not been charged with any part in organizing the events on Jan. 6, however, she has seen some fallout stemming from her support in the past year.
She was named among a handful of members of Congress who sought pardons from outgoing President Donald Trump for their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to testimony presented in June before the House Jan. 6 select committee investigating the attack.
She also faced a challenge to her candidacy prior to the 2022 primary. In May, a Georgia administrative law judge ruled that the challengers to Greene’s candidacy “failed to prove their case by a preponderance of the evidence.”
The challenge contended that Greene should be disqualified from holding public office and stated that she helped facilitate the attack on the Capitol.
During a hearing on April 22, Greene largely denied having knowledge that the attack on the Capitol was going to happen. She repeatedly claimed she did not recall events or statements codified on social media during the hours-long hearing.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger upheld the judge’s decision and Greene won the GOP primary, then a second term in office in November.
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