Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who counts herself among the victims of a “two-tier” justice system in the U.S., is rallying Republicans to make holding the Justice Department accountable a major plank in the party’s campaign platform.
That includes congressional candidates pledging to hold hostage the DOJ spending bills.
“We need to provide oversight and investigations into the Department of Justice and find out why are they failing to do their job, and what is motivating them to choose a two-tier justice system in America,” she told The Washington Times in an interview. “We should talk about accountability. Every GOP candidate should be talking about accountability, holding the Department of Justice accountable for its failures and not upholding federal laws.”
Mrs. Greene, Georgia Republican, also expressed frustration with the Justice Department when she revealed in a recent House floor speech that the U.S. Attorney’s Office refused to prosecute a senior Democratic congressional staffer for repeatedly stealing and defacing a political sign displayed outside Mrs. Greene’s Capitol office.
The signs said: “There are TWO genders: MALE & FEMALE …Trust The Science!”
Mrs. Greene hung the sign outside her office on Feb. 4, 2021, after her neighbor across the hall, Rep. Marie Newman, an Illinois Democrat who has a transgender child, posted a video of herself hanging the transgender pride flag outside the office.
In the social media post, Mrs. Newman also commented that Mrs. Greene attempted to block the House passage of an LGBTQ anti-discrimination bill “because she believes prohibiting discrimination against trans Americans is ‘disgusting, immoral, and evil.’ … Thought we’d put up our Transgender flag so she can look at it every time she opens her door.”
Mrs. Greene responded: “Our neighbor, @RepMarieNewman, wants to pass the so-called ‘Equality’ Act to destroy women’s rights and religious freedoms,” she tweeted. “Thought we’d put up ours so she can look at it every time she opens her door.”
Mrs. Greene said her sign angered many people and, during the past year, it was repeatedly stolen or defaced with anti-Christian stickers. U.S. Capitol Police made an arrest on March 15 after surveillance video caught a man twice vandalizing the sign.
“He was caught. But you know what? They didn’t tell me who it was,” Mrs. Greene said. “They refused to tell me who this person was.”
The vandalism is the tip of the iceberg, she said, noting that since she came to Capitol Hill, she has received 60 death threats and eight sexually related threats against herself and her family.
Police have taken seriously some of the threats. An Endicott, New York, man was charged with threatening to kill Mrs. Greene.
Still, she is irked that the U.S. Attorney’s Office refused to reveal who was caught defacing her “two genders” sign.
“So, I’m still living in fear of who is this person? Why are they doing this? And are they possibly one of the people threatening my life? And then, to my extreme disappointment, I received a phone call from the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” she said before revealing that the DOJ “declined to pursue any kind of any kind of charges against this person.”
The Times asked the Justice Department for comment but did not hear back.
Ultimately, Mrs. Greene obtained the police report, she said, and discovered that the alleged culprit was Tim Hysom, chief of staff to Rep. Jake Auchincloss, Massachusetts Democrat.
“His chief of staff is targeting me. This isn’t an intern or a low-level staffer. That is a chief of staff that’s had quite a career here. Working in this institution. Who knows better,” she said of Mr. Hysom, who previously served as a staffer for Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat.
“This is from our Department of Justice. The same Department of Justice that is not prosecuting people that are harassing our Supreme Court justices and breaking federal law,” Mrs. Greene said during her recent remarks on the floor. “The same Department of Justice that is not keeping our borders safe.”
She said federal agents and prosecutors selectively enforce the law and appear to do so on a partisan basis.
“They don’t care about crime here in this place, in Congress, in the Capitol complex. But they only care about the people that definitely came in and walked around on Jan. 6,” she said. “If you’re one of those people, they are prosecuting you to the hilt, and some of them are rotting in the D.C. jail now. If you’re a Republican member of Congress, and someone is stalking, harassing, attacking your gender, attacking your religion, they drop the charges. You see that is a two-tiered justice system. And I can’t imagine why we’re allowing that to happen.”
According to the arrest warrant, Capitol Police said Mr. Hysom may have vandalized Mrs. Greene’s posters seven times outside her office in the Longworth House Office Building between January and March of 2022. He refused to be interviewed when confronted by authorities and was offered a “non-custodial interview and he declined and retained counsel,” according to the warrant.
“Based on the aforementioned, it is your affiant’s belief that the defendant, Timothy Duane Hysom … did violate DC Code § 22–3312.01 Defacing Public or Private Property,” authorities stated.
Mr. Auchincloss’ spokesperson Matt Corridoni said that Mrs. Greene and other members of Congress “do not own the exterior walls of their office” and that the House Buildings Commission regulations forbid posters on the hallway walls.
“These stickers were never threatening and always respectful,” he said.
He went on to say, “While the Capitol Police were obligated to pass along Rep. Greene’s accusation of ‘destruction of public property to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, they have set aside the charges and have declined to prosecute,” Mr. Corridoni said. “Congressman Auchincloss knew nothing about what his chief of staff had done.”
“Adhering a sticker — to a poster that shouldn’t be there in the first place — is hardly a federal crime,” he said.
Mrs. Greene told the Times that her detractors defend their actions by calling her poster a “message of hate” and saying she deserves what’s happening to her.
She had this response to the statement from Mr. Auchincloss’ office: “It sounds foolish and it sounds silly, but it’s not silly and it’s not silly because the Department of Justice isn’t doing anything to prosecute people breaking federal law at the Supreme Court justices’ houses. They’re not doing anything about the women’s clinics or pregnancy crisis centers from being firebombed. They’re not prosecuting the BLM rioters that destroyed everything in 2020. And they won’t prosecute an on-video crime against a member of Congress.”
“So yes, it is silly to say it’s about a sign, but the truth is, it’s about so much more,” Mrs. Greene said. “It’s a failure, a total failure. And that’s why I’m talking about it. It needs to be talked about because it’s not just me, it’s everybody.”
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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