Staten Island Representative Nicole Malliotakis, who backed a conspiracy theory that the election of former President Donald Trump was rigged, was among three New York Republicans who voted to strip their fellow Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of committee assignments after videos showed Greene declaring 9/11 was a hoax.
Malliotakis joined New York colleagues Chris Jacobs, and John Katko—along with the entire New York Democratic congressional coalition, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ritchie Torres, Carolyn Maloney—in breaking from her colleagues in removing the conspiracy theorist firebrand off the Budget and the Education and Labor committees. The House voting 230-199 in favor of removing Greene came just over a month after she was sworn in to represent Georgia's 14th Congressional District in November.
In a statement, Malliotakis said that Greene's 9/11 comments were "deeply disturbing and extraordinarily offensive" to families of those killed. 247 Staten Islanders are among the nearly 3,000 people killed on 9/11.
On the other side of the aisle, Torres, who represents the Bronx, called Greene "the single greatest embarrassment to the United States government."
Greene's comments were not limited to 9/11 — previous comments include supporting the assassination of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; believing that the 2018 mass shooting of 14 students and three staffers at a Parkland, Florida high school was staged; and posting photos of herself with a gun near the images of Democratic Representatives Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ocasio-Cortez. Greene has also expressed support for QAnon, which (among other things) posits that a "deep state" involved in child and sex trafficking was looking to overthrow Trump. Many QAnon backers were charged with storming the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6th, leading to five deaths.
A day before the vote, and facing pressure from fellow Republicans, Greene—wearing a face mask in the House Chamber that said "Free Speech"—walked back her conspiracy theories on 9/11 and the Parkland mass shooting, but stopped short of apologizing or retracting her statements.
