Marjorie Taylor Greene’s history of dangerous conspiracy theories and comments

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is facing intense backlash for indicating support for political violence and pushing wild conspiracy theories and extreme anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic comments before she was elected to Congress.

The House voted Thursday evening to remove Greene from her committee assignments. On Wednesday, GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and the Republican Conference declined to take action against the freshman Republican for her violent endorsements and incendiary comments.

A CNN KFile review of both newly-uncovered and previously reported comments highlight the fringe nature of what Greene shared on and offline.

Greene defended herself ahead of the House vote in a floor speech Thursday as she tried to distance herself from her past conspiracy comments.

After Greene saw “things in the news that didn’t make sense to me,” she said she “stumbled across” QAnon at the end of 2017. She became “very interested” in the theory and began posting about it on Facebook because she “was upset about things” and felt she could not trust the government.

“The problem with that is, though, is I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true, and I would ask questions about them and talk about them, and that is absolutely what I regret,” she said.

“Because if it weren’t for the Facebook posts and comments that I liked in 2018, I wouldn’t be standing here today and you couldn’t point a finger and accuse me of anything wrong,” continued Greene, who went on to blame the media, including CNN, for her comments.

Here are some of the most extreme things Greene has done:

Greene repeatedly indicated support for political violence and execution of top Democrats and FBI agents

As CNN’s KFile previously reported, Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians – including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry – and FBI agents in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress.

Greene created a White House petition to impeach Pelosi for “treason” after Pelosi did not vote to fund former President Donald Trump’s border wall in 2019. In newly found posts from 2019, she also wrote a “press release” and a previously unreported blog post promoting the petition and suggested that Pelosi could be executed for treason.

In other newly-uncovered tweets and posts, Greene also liked a call to put Pelosi to death. In one tweet, she said she hoped Pelosi would lose her memory sitting in prison.

Greene, in a statement, did not deny that she liked posts and replied to comments but claimed that many people have run her Facebook page. Greene did not specify whether she or a member of her team were behind the posts reviewed by CNN’s KFile.

“Over the years, I’ve had teams of people manage my pages. Many posts have been liked. Many posts have been shared. Some did not represent my views. Especially the ones that CNN is about to spread across the internet,” Greene said in a statement last week.

CNN previously reported that Greene posted on her candidate Facebook page in September 2020 an image of herself holding a gun alongside images of Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. The caption encouraged going on the “offense against these socialists” and was interpreted by observers as a threat against the politicians. The Facebook post was taken down for violating its policies.

Greene’s campaign told CNN in an emailed statement in September 2020 that those who think the picture incites violence “are paranoid and ridiculous.”

In other videos from 2019 and 2020, respectively, Greene encouraged protesters “to flood the Capitol” and endorsed political violence to defend freedom.

“The only way you get your freedoms back is it’s earned with the price of blood,” she said in the video from 2020.

While she was a congresswoman-elect and a sitting congresswoman this January, Greene fanned the flames of the Capitol insurrection by encouraging the big lie that Trump, and not Joe Biden, won the election and objected to the election certification process. Greene later denounced the violence at the Capitol but falsely blamed it on “BLM/Antifa violence” in a statement.

Greene promoted violent, deranged conspiracy theories online

Before she ran for Congress, Greene embraced violent, fringe conspiracies. Chief among them was the QAnon conspiracy theory – a discredited conspiracy that pits former President Trump in an imagined battle against a cabal of Satan-worshipping, child-abusing Democrats and celebrities – though in August 2020 she tried to distance herself from QAnon and claimed that “it doesn’t represent me.”

One of the most disturbing violent conspiracies Greene engaged with in May 2018 is the “Frazzledrip” conspiracy, which exists deep within conspiracy rabbit hole. The conspiracy baselessly contends that Hillary Clinton and former Clinton aide Huma Abedin were videotaped sexually assaulting a child and then ripping off the child’s face to wear as a mask in a Satanic blood sacrifice. The theory then alleges that Clinton ordered an assassination hit against the police officer who found the footage, named “Frazzledrip,” according to reporting from Media Matters.

Greene also peddled in 2017 the debunked “Clinton Kill List” or “Clinton Body Count” conspiracy, which alleges the Clintons have assassinated their associates. She spread false conspiracies the Clintons were involved in sextrafficking and peddled the cruel conspiracy that Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was not killed during an attempted robbery but murdered by Democratic actors.

CNN’s KFile previously reported that Greene in 2017 peddled the “Pizzagate” conspiracy, a debunked conspiracy alleging that Clinton and other Democratic Party leaders were running a human-trafficking and pedophilia ring out of a pizzeria in Washington, DC. In a blog post, she suggested that the White supremacist rally held in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, that killed one woman was an “inside job” to “further the agenda of the elites.”

Greene also endorsed 9/11 trutherism conspiracies and falsely claimed there was no evidence a plane crashed into the Pentagon, according to reporting from Media Matters.

After facing backlash from her plane comments, Greene said in August 2020, “Some people claimed a missile hit the Pentagon. I now know that is not correct. The problem is our government lies to us so much to protect the Deep State, it’s hard sometimes to know what is real and what is not.”

In her floor speech on Thursday, Greene said, “9/11 absolutely happened. I remember that day, crying all day long, watching it on the news. And it’s a tragedy for anyone to say it didn’t happen. So that I definitely want to tell you all, I do not believe it’s fake.”

Greene peddled conspiracies that mass shootings were false flags and “staged”

While Greene peddled violent conspiracy theories online, she often speculated if real-world violent events were part of a deeper conspiracy and were actually false flag operations, which refers to acts that are designed by perpetrators to be made to look like they were carried out by other individuals or groups.

In 2018, she questioned whether the Parkland shooting that killed 17 people was a planned event and called Parkland survivor and activist David Hogg a “paid actor.” In a recently surfaced video from March 2019, Greene follows Hogg as he walks toward the US Capitol and can be heard making false and baseless claims as she asks him a series of questions related to gun rights and how he was able to meet with senators. Hogg continues to walk without addressing Greene.

At the end of the video, Greene calls Hogg a “coward” and claimed Hogg’s activism was funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who is often the subject of far-right conspiracy theories, and other liberals. “He can’t say one word because he can’t defend his stance,” she said.

In another video, she mocked Hogg as an “idiot” who “only talks when he is scripted.”

Greene also supported Facebook comments from 2018 that alleged the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that killed six adults and 20 children was a “staged” event.

She mused on Facebook whether the 2017 Las Vegas massacre – the deadliest mass shooting event in the United States that killed 58 people – was part of a massive conspiracy to enact gun control, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution report. Greene walked back her comments to the AJC and said she was only expressing bewilderment.

In a statement posted on Twitter following intense backlash to some of her comments, Greene acknowledged that 17 people died in the Parkland shooting and blamed “gun free” zones at schools for the tragedy.

After live bombs were sent to Democratic politicians and CNN in October 2018, Greene repeatedly liked and agreed with multiple comments that the terrorist act was a “false flag” operation staged by Democrats.

In one little-remembered Facebook post from September 2018, Greene claimed that the mythical figure “Q” – whom Greene had previously called a “patriot” –warned of false flags for school shootings.

She then questioned if a shooting at Kennesaw State University in Georgia that killed one person was “a failed op? What about hearing voices? Mental illness? Demon possession? Or military grade intelligence developed weapons like Voice of God technology,” which refers to a government-controlled device implanted in a person’s head.

“We don’t know, but I do believe all three of those exist,” she wrote.

Greene made similar unreported comments about the “Voice of God” conspiracy on Twitter in 2018.

In her floor speech Thursday, Greene affirmed that “school shootings are absolutely real and every child that is lost, those families mourn it.”

Greene spread anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic comments and conspiracies

On and offline, Greene frequently engaged with extreme anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim rhetoric. Some of the targets of her comments included her future colleagues in the House of Representatives, like Tlaib and Omar, and Obama, who Greene falsely said is Muslim.

“These are women that really would like to see Sharia in America,” Greene said in one since-deleted Facebook video, captured by CNN. Sharia refers to Islamic law, which is interpreted from the religious text of the Quran, and encompasses marriage, divorce, inheritance and punishments for criminal offenses.

“And as an American woman, as a business owner, as a mother, I have two daughters – I never want to see Sharia in America. And so I really want to go talk to these ladies and ask them what they are thinking and why they’re serving in our American government. They really should go back to the Middle East if they support Sharia. So let’s go talk to them. Definitely want to go talk to them.”

In a 2018 Facebook comment, captured by CNN, Greene responded “truth,” to a comment comparing Obama to terrorist Osama bin Laden. The comment came in response to a post where Greene said the Obama presidency was “flooding our country and government with Muslims that don’t like our American ways!!!!!”

In another video from 2019, saved by CNN’s KFile, Greene spoke about going into Omar’s and Tlaib’s offices and saying all Muslims want to take away women’s rights.

“Did you see the part where we went into Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib’s office?” Greene said. “I was like, so are you going to make me live under Sharia law? And I’m an American woman. Are you going to take away my equal rights?”

“They would in a heartbeat,” responds another rally participant.

“Yeah,” Greene responded. “They all, all, all Muslims. That’s the goal of Islam. The goal of Islam is Sharia, and they want to conquer. They want to conquer America and we’re not going to do it.”

Greene directed anti-Muslim rhetoric at the American Muslim Women Political Action Committee in 2018.

“Wtf is their mission??? To make sure every women is dominated by Islam, is covered in sheets, loses our freedoms, and has to have our vaginas mutilated???,” she wrote in 2018 on Facebook. Greene then liked a comment that the PAC was an “invasion” of our government. In another instance, Greene liked a comment saying “We don’t need gun control! We need Muslim control!”

In 2018, she liked a tweet from an account that pushes anti-Semitic conspiracies suggesting intelligence services for the nation of Israel killed President John F. Kennedy. In another post from 2018, Greene wrote a theory that the deadly wildfires in California that year were caused by a laser from space, possibly controlled by the Rothschild investment bank. The Rothschilds are frequent targets of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Greene has also called Soros, the Democratic donor and philanthropist, a “Nazi” and peddled a conspiracy that Soros is a Jew who “turned in his own people over to the Nazis”; Soros is a Holocaust survivor.

This story has been updated to reflect the House’s vote to remove Greene from her committee assignments.