Marjorie Taylor Greene's Jan. 6 Probe Could Backfire Spectacularly

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has called on House Speaker Mike Johnson to create a new select committee to investigate the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Johnson said on Friday that he plans to release publicly thousands of hours of footage from the attack. This would fulfill a pledge he made last month to right-wing members of the GOP when he was campaigning for the job following the ousting of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. An initial batch of security footage was released on a public committee website on Friday, with the rest of the 44,000 hours of footage expected to be uploaded in the coming months.

"Releasing the tapes is not enough!" Greene, a Georgia Republican, wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday. "There needs to be investigations and ACCOUNTABILITY for ALL of the lies, deceit, and lives ruined. Every member of the Jan 6th committee, Nancy Pelosi, FBI, DOJ [Department of Justice], DC Police, Cap[itol] Police, Jan 6 witnesses who lied, all need to be subpoenaed."

Criminal referrals "must be written and prosecutions MUST happen under a Trump DOJ," Greene wrote. "I've said it all along, MAGA did not do this." Newsweek has contacted Greene and Johnson for comment via email.

Republicans, especially supporters of former President Donald Trump, see the release of the tapes as a tool to reframe the narrative around the Capitol riot after the findings of a House January 6 committee last year. Made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, its members spent months documenting how Trump rallied his supporters to head to the Capitol and "fight like hell" as Congress was certifying Democrat Joe Biden's 2020 election victory.

The committee's lengthy final report, released in December last year, said that Trump engaged in a "multi-part conspiracy" to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol. The former president has denied any wrongdoing and repeatedly said that the case is part of a political witch hunt because he is by far the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination.

The committee recommended federal prosecutors investigate Trump in relation to four crimes, including aiding an insurrection. In August, the Department of Justice indicted Trump on four felony counts for his role in the attack. Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges, as well as the charges in three other criminal cases. It's unclear if a new committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021, would help or hinder his presidential campaign.

A Colorado judge on Friday found that Trump did "engage in insurrection" on January 6, 2021, but rejected an effort to keep him off the state's primary ballot. This is because it is unclear whether a Civil War-era Constitutional amendment barring insurrectionists from public office applies to the presidency.

Greene's call is "most likely, this is a political stunt to delay resolution and to muddy public opinion on the matter," Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University, told Newsweek.

"No one really believes Marjorie Taylor Greene is interested in the truth about January 6."

Thomas Gift, an associate professor of political science and director of the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London in the U.K., said Greene is "playing to the base."

The move "will be looked at with disgust and enmity from her many critics," Gift told Newsweek. "But those aren't the voters she's trying to court. As long as the MAGAverse is behind her (and they are), that's all that matters."

Some on social media wrote that a new committee would backfire on Republicans.

"Quite frankly, I believe the Jan 6 committee held back a lot of incriminating evidence against people like you," one X user replied to Greene. "Go ahead and do it. This will backfire on Republicans just like all of your other stupid stunts."

Another person wrote on X: "The whole f****** world saw the 1/6 violent attack on the Capitol, on television, in real time. How do you negate all that because there was some non violent portion? Your attempt at gaslighting is moronic."

And another wrote that the "proof of what happened on that day is overwhelming" and questioned why Greene allegedly requested a pardon. "Why would you ask for a pardon if you were innocent? What was your role?" they wrote.

Others supported Greene's call, with one person writing that it "absolutely must be done."

Update 11/20/23, 9:30 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Costas Panagopoulos and Thomas Gift.