Sandy Hook Parents Condemn Conspiracy Theorist’s Appointment to Education Committee

In November, Joe Biden wasn’t the only person to get elected to higher office. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right QAnon conspiracy theorist, was also elected to the House. While her election was free and fair, her appointment to committees and her time on the House floor has already been tainted with tension, due to her belief that the election (that she won!) was fraudulent, among other QAnon conspiracy theories. And this week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was appointed to the House Education and Labor Committee.

The appointment has since been condemned by the parents of Sandy Hook victims — due to the Georgia Republican pushing the harmful, and false conspiracy theory that the mass shooting of first-grade students was staged. The reprehensible belief is consistent with Greene’s worldview, and it’s one the Sandy Hook parents are not okay with having on a committee that oversees the education of America’s students.

“Having a Sandy Hook and Parkland denier on the House Education and Labor Committee is an attack on any and every family whose loved ones were murdered in mass shootings that have now become fodder for hoaxers,” Mark Barden and Nicole Hockley, parents of two of the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, said in a statement.

Over the past week, social media exchanges have emerged that show Greene supporting the notion that both the Sandy Hook and Parkland shootings were staged in order to push gun control laws. The Sandy Hook shooting resulted in the death of 26 people, most of whom were six and seven-year-olds, at an elementary school, while 17 people were killed during the Parkland shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School. Fred Guttenberg, who has become a gun control activist since his daughter’s death during the Parkland shooting, said that Greene was a “depraved person who ran for Congress on a lie” and stated that she should be removed from office altogether. He also shared a video that showed Greene harassing David Hogg, a then-minor who was visiting Washington, D.C., about the shooting she believed was staged. She told him that she had a gun and alleged that he was paid to enact gun control.

“She called Parkland a lie, Sandy Hook a lie, Las Vegas a lie, and 9/11 a lie,” Guttenberg said during an MSNBC interview. “She has no business being in Congress.”

Greene’s belief in dangerous conspiracies has proven to go well beyond school shootings, as her social media activity has also shown that she has supported QAnon, 9/11 conspiracies, and Pizzagate, and indicated support for executing prominent colleagues like Nancy Pelosi. She also, apparently, penned a letter that suggested that the 2018 Camp wildfires in California were started by a space laser owned by the Rothschilds. As more details about her views have emerged, support for her to be removed from the House Education and Labor Committee or even from office altogether has increased. California Democrat Jimmy Gomez announced this week that he will be introducing a resolution to have Greene expelled from the House.