Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) defended her calls to defund the FBI in a new interview on Thursday, noting that those calls were “not performative at all.”
The Hill’s Briahna Joy Gray asked Greene on “Rising” whether her push to defund the FBI was a “performative call” or if she was actively taking steps to cut funding to the agency. Gray noted that she agreed with the representative’s call to defund the FBI, saying that the agency had a history of targeting left-leaning groups.
“I didn’t come to Washington to be a performer, I came here to make real changes for our country,” Greene responded.
She added that the Department of Justice and law enforcement agencies have been used as a “political weapon,” and promised to work “very hard” to vote for a budget that includes cuts to the agencies.
“I’m going to work very hard in my conference uh using the power of my voting card to vote for a budget or appropriation bills to be sure that we can hold the FBI accountable and the Department of Justice accountable,” she said.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene appears on The Hill’s “Rising” program April 27, 2023.
Greene, along with other GOP-members, started their calls to cut FBI funding shortly after former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence was searched by the law enforcement agency in connection to classified documents found at his private home. Since then, Greene has started to sell merchandise in her campaign store echoing her rallying attempts to defund the agency.
The Georgia congresswoman has kept up her calls to cut funding for the FBI since the search in Mar-a-Lago last summer. In March, Greene vowed that she would not vote for a Republican budget proposal that did not include budget cuts to both the FBI and the Justice Department.
“I’ve made up my mind. I will NOT vote for a budget that funds the two tiered justice system in America. The Democrat controlled DOJ and FBI top brass are political and have weaponized their power against the right to persecute everyone with conservative values and aligned with Trump, but refuses to prosecute the left for their crimes,” she tweeted last month.
“The Republican controlled budget must defund the two-tiered justice system and reign in the politically weaponized DOJ and FBI, or I will not vote for it,” she added.