But don’t expect Greene, the defender of QAnon and a conspiracy theorist, to be expelled from Congress anytime soon. The system is built to respect the will of voters in any congressional district and, unless she resigns or the majority of the House vote to expel her, Greene is here to stay.
She posted images of herself armed with an AR-15, warning her political opponents to stay out of northwest Georgia – a warning that takes on new meaning after the Capitol has been invaded and now that law enforcement officials are concerned about lawmakers traveling to outside Washington.
As a member of Congress, she is among the most outspoken opponents of counting electoral votes, even after the invasion of the Capitol, and is already trying to impeach President Joe Biden as a kind of counterattack to the impeachment effort against the former president Donald Trump for inciting the riot.
Whether all of this is free speech, intimidation, bullying or direct threats may be up for debate, but it seems very unlikely whether it will cost Greene his seat in Congress. Congress may refuse to enroll a member, a process known as exclusion, but it has not been used since the Reconstruction era.
How can a member of Congress be expelled? The Constitution gives Congress the ability to impeach federal officials and judges, but not their own members. They can only be removed by expulsion, which requires 2/3 of the vote.
Democrats barely have a majority in the House, and Republicans have not penalized Greene by removing her from the committee’s duties, which they did to former Iowa deputy Steve King after his serial racist comments in recent years.
Who expelled Congress? Most common, but only little, is expulsion, or when lawmakers kick one of their own out of the chamber. Only 20 federal lawmakers have been expelled in US history (15 in the Senate and only 5 in the House). The vast majority of the expulsions had to do with the Civil War. There were only two post-Civil War expulsions – Rep. Michael Myers, a Pennsylvania Democrat, was expelled after receiving money from secret FBI agents. The other was James Traficant, the Ohio Democrat, who was convicted on bribery charges.
Does a legislator need to break the law to be expelled? No. And Greene was not charged with any crime. The Constitution gives Congress the power to establish its own rules and punish members as they see fit, including expulsion, provided that 2/3 of the members agree.
Can voters send a con man to Congress? Right! The custom in Congress, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service on the practice, is that a member should not be expelled for conduct that occurred before taking his seat; the idea that voters should get who they want. That’s how David Vitter, a former Republican senator from Louisiana, survived a prostitution scandal. The scandal occurred while he was a federal deputy, so the Senate Ethics Committee, after a 10-month investigation, argued that he should not face serious consequences in the Senate. He was re-elected a year later, but lost a subsequent candidacy for governor. Vitter’s wife, who supported him, was appointed by Trump as a federal judge.
What if a lawmaker is accused of a crime? Usually, instead of being expelled, lawmakers facing criminal charges resign when they are convicted. That’s what the Reps. Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter did during the Trump administration. Trump later forgave them both. Other lawmakers act and serve on Capitol Hill while on trial. New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat, won federal corruption charges when authorities dropped the case after the trial was overturned. And then he won re-election. Trump forgave the doctor accused of being Menendez’s co-conspirator.
Again, Greene was not charged with any crime. But even if it were, it is unlikely to be expelled from Congress.
Is there any penalty beyond expulsion? There is censorship, which has been used more frequently and is less severe, as it is basically a very strong, but still embarrassing, slap on the wrist.
In the Senate, there is talk of an effort to censor Trump, rather than supporting his conviction on impeachment charges of inciting the Capitol insurrection. Unlike Trump, if a member of the House is censored, they have to stay in the House pit and listen to their crimes read aloud, a kind of public shame in front of the rest of the club. The last member of the House to face censorship was Congressman Charles Rangel, the New York Democrat who chaired the tax drafting committee, but did not pay his taxes.
An even less severe slap on the wrist is the “reprimand”, which was employed against South Carolina deputy Joe Wilson when he shouted “You lie!” President Barack Obama during a speech in Congress. Here is a complete list of evictions, censorship and reprimands from the Chamber.
Why are so few expelled? There can be a number of reasons. One reason is the Constitution, points out the CRS report, which says that the people of a district or state must choose their representatives. This is an important voter right. The people of Georgia’s 14th congressional district again choose whether Greene should represent them in November 2022.
Related to this is the fact that, almost without fail, lawmakers facing expulsions, censorship, reprimands or even criminal investigations say that it all comes down to politics, not the decency of the law. The USA is a country committed to freedom of expression and an open political process, so this can be a convincing argument.
Another reason why it is difficult to expel a legislator is that there is not a good ethics process in place in Congress. Both the Chamber and the Senate have ethics committees and processes in their bylaws. But they are notoriously slow and irresponsible.
What will Republican leaders do about Greene’s comments? They will talk to her.
“These comments are deeply disturbing and leader McCarthy plans to have a conversation with the congresswoman about them,” said a spokesman for minority leader in the House, Kevin McCarthy, in a statement on Wednesday.
The parallel story here is that McCarthy is also trying to return to Trump’s good graces and Trump once called Greene a rising star at the party when he had a Twitter account.
Does Greene face any opposition at home? It depends entirely on the voters they send to Congress, and voters in Georgia’s 14th congressional district chose Greene. In fact, she ran essentially unopposed in the 2020 election, after winning a second round in the primaries. The rural district, located along the borders of Tennessee and Alabama, is among the most conservative in the United States, according to the Cook Political Report.
The Democrat who challenged her, a political rookie named Kevin Van Ausdal, ran a campaign for 31 days before being frightened and intimidated by QAnon supporters, and essentially fled the state when his marriage and life disintegrated. Seriously, read this Washington Post profile for your campaign.
