Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Trying to ‘Defund’ Trump Prosecutors
Hard-right congresswoman seeks to derail accountability for the former president
A prominent hard-right Republican congresswoman — who has only grown in influence since her party took control of the House in January — is working to cut off funding for the federal prosecution of Donald Trump.
Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, is trying to eliminate federal funding for special counsel Jack Smith's ability to seek accountability for the former president's handling of classified and sensitive documents after he left office.
Trump is set to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon in a federal courtroom on 37 counts related to his retention of boxes of federal documents — many reportedly dealing with the nation's most-sensitive military and nuclear secrets — after the former president disobeyed a subpoena for the documents' return.
FBI agents last year recovered documents from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida using a lawful search warrant.
But in Washington DC, Greene — a staunch Trump ally — is looking to short-circuit the process by pulling funding for it from the Justice Department's budget.
“Today I’d like to announce that I’m writing an appropriations rider to defund Jack Smith’s special counsel, his office, and the investigation. This is a weaponized government attempt to take down the top political enemy and leading presidential candidate of the United States, Donald J. Trump,” she said baselessly Monday, on the House floor. “We cannot allow the government to be weaponized for political purposes. I’d also like to ask all of my colleagues to join me in this effort. We have to use the power of appropriations to stop the weaponization of government, especially in light that we know that there are others who are guilty of true crimes.”
Greene's influence in government has grown in recent months, as she is an ally and backer of Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Greene added several of the political right’s favorite-but-legally-irrelevant “whataboutisms” in an effort to defend her position.
“Never forget that former Secretary of State and Senator Hillary Clinton had classified documents on Anthony Weiner’s laptop, who was convicted of sending, sexting a minor, inappropriate pictures. This is not how classified documents should be handled,” she said. “There should have been an investigation done into that. Don’t forget Joe Biden’s documents that are sitting in his garage next to his Corvette where the door opens and closes. America sees this for exactly what it is and we will not allow it to stand.”
Clinton was investigated by the FBI and no charges were ever filed. And while President Biden — and former vice president Mike Pence — were both discovered to have wrongly kept federal documents, both men promptly cooperated with the federal government for their safe return.
And Biden currently is the target of his own federal investigation into the matter.
Even if Greene's effort to defund Smith's office somehow passes the House, it would be dead-on-arrival in the Democratic Senate.
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