US House votes to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees

The US House of Representatives voted on Thursday night to remove controversial Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee positions after a rancorous debate within the Republican party about the behaviour of the recently elected member.

The Democrat-controlled House voted by 230-199 to remove Ms Greene from the budget and education committees.

Eleven Republicans joined with all Democrats in voting to censure the Georgia representative – one more than the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach former president Donald Trump last month.

The vote took place after Republicans declined to strip Ms Greene of her committee assignments, despite House minority leader Kevin McCarthy condemning her previous statements.

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“Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican conference,” Mr McCarthy said in a statement on the eve of the vote. “I condemn those comments unequivocally.”

But he accused Democrats of “raising the temperature” and exercising a “partisan power grab” by trying to undermine the committee assignments of another party.

Ms Greene, a prominent supporter of the radical QAnon group who was elected in Georgia in November’s elections, has come under fire for her support of conspiracy theories, including the notion that the September 11th attacks did not take place and that several mass school shootings were staged.

Her conduct was the subject of heated debate at a private Republican party meeting on Wednesday. During that meeting, House Republicans also voted by secret ballot to keep the third-ranking Republican, Liz Cheney, in her leadership position.

The Wyoming representative has suffered a backlash from the pro-Trump wing of the party over her vote to impeach the former president last month. But ultimately Ms Cheney won the vote of confidence by 145 to 61.

Speaking in the House ahead of Thursday’s vote, Ms Greene addressed some of her past comments, stating that “school shootings are absolutely real”, and the September 11th terrorist attacks “absolutely happened”. But she said that Democrats want to “crucify me in the public square for words that I said a few years ago”.

Separately, the House managers overseeing next week’s impeachment trial wrote to Mr Trump requesting him to testify under oath before or during the trial. “If you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions [and inaction] on January 6th, 2021,” they wrote.

However, in a statement, Mr Trump’s lawyers dismissed the letter as a “publicity stunt”.