The House Freedom Caucus (HFC) has voted in favor of removing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) from the staunchly conservative group, a board member of the caucus said Thursday.
When Mr. Harris was asked if she was formally removed from the group, he responded: “As far as I know, that is the way it is.”
Mr. Harris told the publication that Ms. Greene’s close affiliation with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and support of President Joe Biden’s debt deal may have contributed to her removal.
“I think all of that mattered,” he replied when asked if her support for Mr. McCarthy played a role in the group’s decision to vote her out. He declined to say how he voted.
Thursday’s vote would mark the first time a member has been removed from the group.
A spokesperson for the HFC, which was founded in 2015, declined to comment on the vote to expel Ms. Greene, saying: “HFC does not comment on membership or internal process.”
In a statement to news outlets Thursday evening, Ms. Greene did not directly point out whether she was in or out of the group, saying she serves “no group in Washington.”
“In Congress, I serve Northwest Georgia first, and serve no group in Washington. My America First credentials, guided by my Christian faith, are forged in steel, seared into my character, and will never change,” she said.
“I fight every single day in the halls of congress against the hate-America Democrats, who are trying to destroy this country,” the congresswoman continued. “I will work with ANYONE who wants to secure our border, protect our children inside the womb and after they are born, end the forever foreign wars, and do the work to save this country.”
Heated Confrontation
The move to expel Ms. Greene from the roughly three-dozen-strong conservative group comes weeks after she engaged in a heated clash on the House of Representatives floor with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) over the latter’s plan to impeach Biden.Responding to Ms. Greene’s verbal altercation with Ms. Boebert, Mr. Harris told Politico that he believes her publicly addressing a fellow member in the way that she did was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“I think the way she referred to a fellow member was probably not the way we expect our members to refer to other fellow, especially female, members,” he said.
Mr. McCarthy said he had requested that Ms. Boebert discuss her resolution with the House GOP conference before initiating a vote, but she proceeded without doing so, generating mixed reactions within the Republican Party.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Ms. Boebert declined to say how the congresswoman voted at the HFC meeting, which reportedly took place the morning that Congress left town before the July 4th recess.
