Rep. Jimmy Gomez Calls for Marjorie Taylor Greene's Expulsion, Committee Removal 'Not Enough'

The House of Representatives voted Thursday to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments over controversial social media posts from before she was elected, but calls remain for her expulsion from Congress.

In an editorial published by NBC News on Friday, Representative Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) called the committee removal a "good first step." But he believed the Georgia Republican congresswoman's past conduct warranted a more severe punishment.

"If you look at her behavior and comments—in the context of what had been going on in the country before Nov. 3, then after the elections, and finally during and after the insurrection that occurred on Jan. 6—removing her from the committees is not enough," Gomez wrote. "It's a great first step, because somebody who peddles in lies and conspiracy theories should not have a platform to try to influence the education policy of the United States. But it's not enough."

Gomez introduced a resolution to expel Greene on January 27 in light of reporting about Greene's past social media activity—which ranged from spreading QAnon messages and other conspiracies that school shootings were staged events to allegedly indicating support for executing prominent Democratic politicians.

In one post, Greene liked a comment that said "a bullet to the head would be quicker" to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

House Democrats also moved forward with stripping Greene of her seats on the education and labor committee as well as the budget committee after Republican leadership denied to take action against her. Eleven Republicans joined Democrats in the final vote to strip her of her assignments on Thursday.

Before the vote, Greene made a final appeal to her colleagues in a speech from the House floor. Greene separated herself from QAnon, stating she stopped "believing it" in late 2018 and never used the word during her campaign last year or during her time in Congress so far.

"These were words of the past and these things do not represent me," Greene said in her remarks. "They do not represent my district and they do not represent my values."

But Gomez pushed back on her remarks in his editorial Friday, writing that "she hasn't apologized: instead, she blamed the backlash to her dangerous statements on cancel culture, simply affirmed the fact that 9/11 happened, that school shootings aren't all fake and said that, when it came to her embrace of the cult-like QAnon conspiracy theory, she had been 'allowed to believe things that weren't true,' rather than take responsibility for her own embrace and promotion of the lies and misinformation."

Gomez also highlighted Greene's fundraising off the controversy. The congresswoman posted multiple posts on Twitter asking her supporters for money amid the efforts to remove her from the committees and from Congress. On Wednesday, she announced she had raised $175,000.

"Expelling a member from Congress is not something that's done lightly; it's not something that's been done many times in the history of the United States House of Representatives. But I believe that, in this case, it is completely warranted," Gomez wrote.

Newsweek has reached out to Greene's office for a response to Gomez's editorial and the vote to remove her from committees.