House Oversight and Accountability Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (R-Md.) called the recent verbal battle in his committee sparked by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) words “a failure of leadership.”
“So, this was a failure of leadership,” Raskin said on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” Friday. “When the chairman of the committee declined simply to rule her words out of order, and to have them taken down, as [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)] immediately moved to do, when he refused to do that, at that point, it unleashed the chaos in the committee.”
On Thursday night, lawmakers traded barbs during a House Oversight Committee hearing after Greene commented on the appearance of fellow committee member Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas). The hearing was focused on holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt following him not handing over the audio of President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur.
However, when Greene was questioning if Democrats on the panel employed the daughter of the judge overseeing Trump’s New York hush money case, Crockett chimed in, pushing back against the relevance of Greene’s words.
“I don’t think you know what you’re here for,” Greene said to Crockett. “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”
From there, chaos erupted as Democrats expressed their indignation with Greene’s behavior, and Greene continued to push back.
“At a certain point, the Republican conference is going to have to get on top of their Marjorie Taylor Greene problem, but instead, they continue to empower her,” Raskin told Burnett Friday.
Greene later said in a post on the social platform X that “some people are upset about the scene from Oversight Committee last night, well I’m upset and disgusted pretty much everyday at the Democrat controlled DOJ, federal government, and Congress in general.”
“Pardon me if I don’t talk as nicely as some people would like to hear.”
The Hill has reached out to House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.)