Marjorie Taylor Greene Faces Republican Backlash for Breaking Promise

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene responded to criticism on Monday from conservatives who accused her of breaking her promise to secure the release of security tapes from the January 6, 2021, riot at the United States Capitol building.

Greene, a Georgia Republican, “promised” journalists in a social media post on May 31, 2023, that House Republicans would release tapes from the riot during which some Donald Trump supporters violently protested the 2020 presidential results. The GOP lawmaker has previously raised concerns about the treatment of some January 6 protesters who did not engage in the violence that took place during the insurrection, saying they have been mistreated by the criminal justice system.

“I’m excited to share the good news that just as I promised the J6 tapes are being released! @SpeakerMcCarthy has given @jsolomonReports, @Julie_kelly2, and a third outlet unfettered access to the J6 tapes, and their reporting on it starts tomorrow. This is the transparency the American people deserve and I look forward to their reporting!” she wrote at the time in a post to X, formerly known as Twitter.

However, late Sunday evening, journalist Julie Kelly called out House Republicans for never following through with the release of the footage.

“The pledge by GOP to release all the Jan 6 videos has been broken,” she wrote in an X post. “I believed my involvement to make footage available was a temporary fix until staff could protect innocents from DOJ and thugs like Sedition Hunters. Now I see GOP has capitulated to DOJ and Capitol police.”

Kelly’s post came after conservatives questioned Greene and other House Republicans about the release of the January 6 tapes.

“I asked her the real questions nobody else wants to ask. Where are the J6 tapes she promised and lied and said she released months ago? Why hasn’t her bestie @SpeakerMcCarthy endorsed President Trump’s re-election? Why did she show up to the #FultonCountyJail after tweeting and telling everyone to not show up to support President Trump?” conservative activist Laura Loomer wrote in an August 25 post to X.

Greene responded to Kelly, writing on Monday morning that she stopped calling for the public release of the tapes when she learned “that groups like sedition hunters would use facial recognition software to go after more vulnerable people.”

“After seeing the horrific inhumane treatment of pretrial J6 defendants in the DC jail in 2021 and being one of the few members of congress that is against the persecution of J6’ers, I was afraid the DOJ would unjustly target more people,” she wrote. “But if they can use facial recognition, why can’t we? Our patriots can find the feds and/or provocateurs who were involved in J6 that the DOJ protects. I’m all for releasing the tapes!”

Still, some conservatives criticized her response.

“All talk no action…,” wrote X user Lawrence Melde.

“And you and @SpeakerMcCarthy decided to sweep it all under the rug instead of talking to your constituents. You two will not get past this. You arrogantly turned your back on J6 Prisoners, and the promise to release footage. Then expect be everyone else to trust you guys,” wrote X user @GroundPound101.

Greene’s remarks also sparked criticism from others who favor releasing the January 6 tapes.

“Respectfully Congresswoman, could you give us a straight answer then? Like @julie_kelly2 says – this (a procedure to look at slivers at a time and request tiny pieces) is not the promise kept to release it all. Do you favor publicly releasing it all now, rather than this?” wrote independent journalist Ford Fischer.

Greene first said she changed her position on the tapes during an interview with conservative news outlet Real America’s Voice in June.

“And this is our real concern with the videotapes. If we released these videotapes just widely for the public—number one, we put the security of the Capitol at risk, because there’s over 1,700 video cameras. Number two, we also endanger many Americans that were simply standing on the Capitol grounds, maybe never even walked through the Capitol or committed any crimes, but they could have just walked further than where the barrier was simply because the barrier was torn down by the time they got there,” Greene said.

Newsweek reached out to Greene’s office for comment via email.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy released 44,000 hours of January 6 security footage to conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, then a Fox News host, earlier this year.