Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin blasted House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer in a letter Thursday for allowing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to show Hunter Biden’s nude photos during a hearing last week, saying the committee is “rapidly being reduced to the level of a 1970s-era dime store peep show.” Raskin is demanding that Comer deal with it and restore some dignity to the committee with a public rebuke of Greene and “a statement condemning her actions as an affront to the dignity, propriety, and decorum of the Committee.”
“It is incumbent upon you to make clear that Rep. Greene’s use of pornographic images at a public hearing clearly violated House rules and to ensure that we are not subject to repeated incidents or similarly unacceptable actions in future hearings,” Raskin wrote. “If this was acceptable for Rep. Greene, you are establishing it as acceptable for all Members.”
Comer responded predictably by basically telling Raskin to shove it, and then changing the subject. He accused Raskin of trying to spare Hunter Biden embarrassment instead of worrying about “the young women he involved in his illegal activities.” So, yes, consider that an invitation to the rest of the Republicans on Comer’s committee to bring revenge porn to every hearing.
Greene didn’t just show the poster-sized dick pics in the hearing, which was broadcast to the nation on plenty of cable news channels and C-SPAN. She then sent the pictures out to her constituents from her official House email account.
Greene is completely unrepentant (and very Trumpy) about her foray into congressional porn distribution. She says that as an elected member of Congress, her display of the images “is protected by the speech and debate clause,” and claims she can “say anything and show information in any way” that she wants.
Comer isn’t going to do anything about her. Speaker Kevin McCarthy isn’t going to do anything about her. She’s going to keep showing up at these committee meetings with increasingly outrageous material and, as Raskin warns, that will probably mean every other asshole Republican will want to one-up her with stunts like this for the attention and inevitable scammy fundraising opportunities.
Letting her get away with it is an admission that this is the current sad state of the Republican Party. That is probably what Raskin meant to do when he wrote the letter. He couldn’t have believed Comer actually cared about his committee’s reputation, or the institution of Congress. But he succeeded in goading Comer into that admission.
Sign the petition: Marjorie Taylor Greene must be removed from U.S. House committees
