What to Know
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) believes that the federal government is not justified in its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
While speaking on the “Tomi Lahren Is Fearless” podcast, Greene took aim at President Donald Trump’s administration and the Republican Party, arguing that releasing documents tied to the late convicted sex offender “should have never been a fight in the first place.”
“This was a campaign promise,” Greene said in comments released Thursday. “We all campaigned on it. People in the administration said it over and over again.”
The Justice Department released nearly 3.5 million investigative pages tied to Epstein’s sex-trafficking case in separate drops on Dec. 19 and Jan. 30 after the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which compelled the DOJ to make all documents public, passed through Congress. Trump signed the bipartisan effort into law last November, reversing course after repeatedly calling it a “hoax” pushed by Democrats.
In the episode, Greene said that Trump had lashed out at her as she and three other Republicans kept their signatures on a discharge petition to trigger a floor vote in the House — the first step toward releasing the documents.
“The president yelled at me, was angry at me, told me that his friends would get hurt, and that’s why he wanted me to take my name off that discharge petition,” Greene said, adding that Trump had previously discussed making the files available since 2015.
“And I told him absolutely not,” Greene said. “This is a moral line in the sand.”
Greene went on to argue that the issue was “the easiest thing” for the GOP to rally around without Democrats, who she claimed “clearly never cared about it until it became a political scoreboard for them.”
“Now, it was mishandled so poorly that here they are, they’re taking victory laps that they don’t even deserve,” Greene said. “I think it’s been the biggest political miscalculation, but it has also shattered MAGA and caused us to lose the independent vote.”
She also said that the American people are “extremely unsatisfied” and “outraged,” going to call for additional files to be released. While the over 3 million pages are currently available to view online, the DOJ has previously claimed that it has an extensive trove of more than 6 million documents in total in its possession.
“People have completely lost hope and trust in our government, and rightfully so,” Greene said. “It has been decades where we’ve watched administration after administration do nothing and hold no one accountable for this, and then it was such a fight — such a fight to the point it was what pushed me out of politics.”
Greene noted that her disagreements with Trump over the files ultimately prompted him to launch attacks against her, including decrying her as a “traitor” and threatening to back a primary challenger in her Georgia district.
Following a blowup in interviews and on social media, Greene, a once-staunch loyalist of Trump, announced last November that she would not seek reelection, but rather step down from her House seat early.
The sudden announcement, which rocked the political world, came exactly one week after Trump withdrew his support and endorsement of the MAGA firebrand.
Greene had decried his public jabs as “a dog whistle to dangerous radicals that could lead to serious attacks on me and my family.”
“This puts blood in the water and creates a feeding frenzy,” Greene wrote in a post on X in November. “And it could ultimately lead to a harmful or even deadly outcome.”
During her first major interview after announcing her resignation from Congress, Greene detached herself from the MAGA movement, saying that she instead now identifies as “America First.” She officially left office on Jan. 5.
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