Fact check: Rep. Chris Stewart falsely claims he voted to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from committees
By Daniel Dale, CNN
Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah made a false claim about his voting record in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Monday night, wrongly saying that he had voted to remove Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from House committees.
Stewart made the assertion after Cuomo, anchor of “Cuomo Prime Time,” challenged him on whether he has done enough to combat the far-right QAnon conspiracy movement or “the QAnon person in your ranks,” a reference to Greene.
Stewart said he knows nothing about QAnon and doesn’t have a responsibility to speak about comments from its adherents, just as he doesn’t have a responsibility to speak about comments from participants in the left-wing antifa movement. Later in the interview, Stewart criticized the media for having “elevated” QAnon.
Cuomo scoffed at this media criticism. He said, “You put both arms around Marjorie Taylor Greene and you brought her into your conference. That’s what you did.”
Stewart disagreed, noting that the people of Greene’s Georgia district, not him, elected her in 2020. But then Cuomo asked Stewart where he had stood on a February resolution to expel Greene from House committees. That vote came in the wake of the discovery of additional extremist statements Greene made before being elected, including calls for the execution of prominent Democratic politicians.
Cuomo asked, “Did you vote to have her removed from the committees?”
Stewart responded, “I actually did.”
Facts First: As Cuomo noted at the end of his show, Stewart’s claim was not true: Stewart actually voted against the resolution that removed Greene from House committees. A Stewart spokesman acknowledged Tuesday that the congressman’s assertion was “incorrect,” saying that he “misspoke.”
The spokesman, Liam Anderson, said Stewart had meant to refer to how he had condemned Greene’s comments in a statement he had issued on the day of the vote in February.
In that statement, Stewart said he condemned Greene’s “hateful” and “abhorrent” remarks before coming to Congress and that these remarks do not represent Republican values. But Stewart continued by stating his objection to the Democratic resolution to eject Greene from the House’s Budget Committee and its Education and Labor Committee.
“While I believe she must be held accountable, this is not a decision for Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats,” Stewart said in the statement, calling it a “hypocritical political stunt” for Democrats to take action against Greene but not take similar action against certain of their own members.
The resolution to kick Greene off of the committees passed 230-199. Eleven Republicans voted in favor, while 199 Republicans voted against.
