Christian Smith
The chaos at Thursday night’s hearing drew rebuke from both sides of the aisle after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) attacked another member’s physical appearance, a barb that Democrats said had racial overtones.
Lawmakers on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee criticized the episode as “disgusting,” “embarrassing” and a “high school fight.”
Tempers may have been tense at the start of the oversight panel’s hearing, which was moved to Thursday’s 8 p.m. EDT start time to accommodate Republicans who traveled to New York earlier in the day to attend the trial of former -President Trump.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the panel, said the issues evolved from there in what Democrats said was an alcohol-fueled hearing that included a long detour to address Greene’s comments.
“There were a bunch of members who skipped legislative votes yesterday to go to Donald Trump’s trial. There was drinking going on in the hearing room on the Republican side. I don’t even want to imagine how much drinking was going on on the train or in New York,” Raskin said.
“And these members came back out of control. And the president didn’t control them, and the institution pays the price,” he told reporters on the steps of the Capitol on Friday morning.
“They skipped the legislative votes to go to Trump’s trial and came back fueled by a lot of Trump-style animosity.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) also criticized the tone and content of the disputes between lawmakers, without singling out any members.
“It’s not a good look for Congress,” Johnson told reporters on Friday, adding that “decorum is an important principle to maintain.”
The hearing was held to consider the partisan issue of holding Attorney General Merrick Garland liable for contempt of Congress for refusing to share audio of President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur.
Biden claimed executive privilege over the audio on Thursday, and Democrats criticized the GOP effort, noting that Republicans already have a transcript of the interview.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) questioned whether Republicans “know what we’re here for” after the meeting was diverted to a discussion of Trump’s trial.
“I don’t think you know why you’re here,” Greene responded. “I think your false eyelashes are getting in the way of what you’re reading.”
Those words set off a firestorm of insults as Speaker James Comer (R-Ky.) struggled to maintain control of the meeting.
At one point, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado), who has sometimes tangled with Greene, crossed the aisle to join Oversight Democrats in voting on a motion to censure Greene’s comments.
At one point during the hearing, she apologized for the “dispute”.
“Are we just going to throw insults at each other? I thought it was a huge waste of time,” she said on Friday.
“It’s embarrassing that we’re elected officials and that’s what we’re going to do in committee.”
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida) said members need to “grow up.”
Boebert and Luna were among the Oversight members who traveled to New York for Trump’s trial. Greene was not in New York on Thursday.
Democrats argued that the trip to New York helped derail the meeting.
“We had supervision at night because they wanted to allow our members to go to the courthouse in New York to hug Donald Trump and keep him warm in the courtroom because it’s cold there,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Florida). he quipped.
Accusations of racism
Crockett, along with other oversight Democrats, said Greene’s comments showed clear racial bias.
“She is racist. I mean, I have no doubts about it. Because, I mean, I don’t know if she ever attacked her own colleagues,” Crockett said Friday, noting that Greene didn’t comment on Boebert’s appearance even though the two have fought in the past.
“She and Boebert are not getting along. Boebert has bobby pins in her hair. And Boebert also wears eyelashes sometimes – it seems. I don’t know. But she doesn’t attack her for anything of hers [physical embellishments]. She doesn’t do that, right? But she decided to do it with me. So absolutely [she’s a racist],” said Crockett.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) called the comments “horrible” and “disgusting.”
“She is using racist language. She’s attacking other women,” Garcia said of Greene.
“I think there is no doubt that Marjorie Taylor Greene uses racist language all the time. I mean, let’s be very clear, she is always, in fact, I think, coddling white supremacists, she is coddling the language that Donald Trump uses. And so there is no doubt that that is the case,” she added, noting that Greene has refused to apologize.
Greene’s office did not respond to The Hill’s request for comment, but acknowledged in a post on social platform X that some were “upset by the scene” at the hearing.
“Well, I am upset and disgusted almost every day with the Democrat-controlled DOJ, the federal government, and Congress in general,” Greene wrote.
“Forgive me if I don’t speak as well as some people would like to hear.”
Even as Republicans denounced Greene’s comments, many criticized Crockett for reacting later in the roughly three-hour hearing.
At one point, Crockett asked whether a hypothetical comment — which appeared to be a veiled jab at Greene — would break congressional protocol.
“I’m just curious, just to better understand your decision,” Crockett said, referring to a decision Comer had made regarding Greene’s comments.
“If someone on this committee starts talking about someone’s blond, poorly built body, that wouldn’t be engaging in personalities, right?”
GOP sees Dem comments that should be withdrawn
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who skipped a Judiciary Committee meeting on the same issue earlier in the day so he could attend Trump’s trial but returned for the oversight meeting, said Democrats also made comments that should be “removed”. a nod to the process of censoring comments made during a hearing.
“Things were said on both sides of the aisle that were not proper decorum. I went up and mentioned this to the ranking member, that you can’t have some of these words taken down at the same time as your own members [are] saying some personally destructive things as well,” Biggs said.
“I think we could do better with more decorum.”
But that angered Democrats, who said Crockett was defending himself.
“Jasmine Crockett is a class act and she backed away when she was pushed several times,” Garcia said.
They also criticized Comer for failing to control the meeting.
“The lady from Georgia started, stimulated and caused. And I think the ranking member did his best to respond. But at the end of the day, it’s Speaker Comer’s responsibility to try to maintain decorum in that room and he just couldn’t do it,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas).
Raskin similarly said that Comer’s refusal to punish Greene occurred “as the entire process descended into chaos.”
Comer’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Dan Goldman (DN.Y.) suggested that responsibility also lies with Johnson.
“I think the speaker of the House needs to rein in some of his members who are not just out of line but completely out of control,” he said.
“And it’s not a good reflection on Congress to see something that looks like a high school fight.”
