Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s display at a congressional hearing of photographs of Hunter Biden having sex with prostitutes set off a firestorm online, with critics calling for the lawmaker to be prosecuted under state revenge porn laws.
Ms. Greene on Thursday told The Washington Times that there was no revenge involved since Hunter Biden was proud of the photo.
“How is that possible [to be revenge]? Hunter Biden uploaded his own sex videos on porn sites. So that’s not anything I did wrong. He wanted people to see him,” said Ms. Greene, Georgia Republican.
“The real question I didn’t get to [was] did Hunter Biden receive payments for the porn that he uploaded on the sites? And if he was … basically selling on these porn sites, did he pay taxes?”
During a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing Wednesday, Ms. Greene displayed the photos of Mr. Biden engaged in sex acts with an alleged prostitute. Said it was evidence that he had violated a federal law prohibiting transporting someone across state lines for sex.
Before she held up the explicit images, Ms. Greene warned that “parental discretion is advised.”
She then related those acts to women Mr. Biden had written off on his taxes as business expenses, including one he labeled a “West Coast assistant” to his law firm.
“This is not really what most paralegals do for law firms,” she said at the hearing, holding up one photo of a nearly naked woman and another who appeared to be her performing oral sex on Hunter Biden. The explicit content was blacked out in the photo.
She made the presentation during the questioning of two IRS special agents who led an investigation into Mr. Biden’s tax crimes. The IRS agents alleged that Mr. Biden wrote off a $10,000 sex club membership as a golf membership and that he wrote off airplane flights and hotel rooms for prostitutes as business expenses.
Ms. Greene said that, in flying one woman from Los Angeles to Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia for sex, Mr. Biden violated the Mann Act.
The Mann Act is a century-old law that criminalizes transporting someone across state lines for sexual purposes that are illegal in that region.
Social media users launched a crusade this week to get authorities to investigate Ms. Greene, calling for everyone from the U.S. Capitol Police to the FBI Federal Communications Commission to investigate her for showing pornography on live television.
“This is a textbook example of revenge porn,” blared MeidasTouch, an account on the new Threads platform.
Users on Reddit promoted a campaign to call the Capitol Police, saying that if they got enough calls the agency would be required to investigate.
The Washington Times has reached out to the Capitol Police and the FCC for comment on their next steps.
Some social media denizens also suggested she might have run afoul of laws in states that require age verification to view pornography. Utah, Mississippi and Virginia have laws requiring websites that display pornography to check IDs to verify users’ ages.
But Ms. Greene could be protected under the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause, which indemnifies lawmakers for actions they take as part of legislative business.
The Congressional Research Service, in a report on the clause, said that court precedent has found that a lawmaker’s actions in committee, including preparations for the committee, are probably protected.
Stanley M. Brand, who served as general counsel for the House in the 1970s and 1980s, agreed that Ms. Greene is likely protected, though he said others who share Ms. Greene’s materials might not be.
“Generally speaking, the speech or debate clause immunity would extend to conduct at a committee hearing and activities in preparation for the hearing,” he said.
He pointed to a case involving a senator who released the Pentagon Papers during a hearing. The Supreme Court held that his actions were protected from prosecution even though the release would have been illegal outside of the legislative context.
“However any republication or dissemination of the material outside the Congress would be subject to civil and criminal actions,” Mr. Brand said.
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this article.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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