Ilhan Omar denounces possible removal of committee: it “was reserved only for the most egregious misdeeds”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) denounced House Republicans’ plan to potentially vote to remove her from the foreign affairs committee, saying on Wednesday the move was “reserved only for the most egregious wrongdoings.”
Omar’s comments came during a press conference, just after that morning Republicans reviewed several examples of Omar’s past controversial comments while considering voting to remove her from the committee, Axios. reported.
The newspaper noted that moderate Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), who was on the fence about removing the committee, was persuaded during the meeting to vote for him.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) first announced his plan to vote on the Omar committee in an interview with Breitbart News over a year ago.
“Ilhan Omar should not work for the Foreign Office,” McCarthy said at the time. “This is a new level of what the Democrats have done.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks at a press conference outside his office at the US Capitol on January 24, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The House of Representatives voted largely on a partisan basis to strip Congressmen Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ) of their committee positions in 2021 due to their inflammatory rhetoric and social media posts. That same year, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (R-CA) rejected two of McCarthy’s proposals to the selection committee on January 6.
A full House vote is expected shortly to strip Omar of her foreign affairs committee seat, but whether McCarthy gets enough votes to pass the measure remains in question. Representatives Nancy Mays (R-SC) and Victoria Spartz (R-IN) said they would not support it, meaning McCarthy could only afford a couple of other defections before the measure would fail if the Democrats voted unanimously against it.
Republicans opposed Omar’s work on the committee after the two-term Democrat from Minnesota gained a reputation after entering the Congressional stage for spreading anti-Semitic clichés such as claiming that Israel “hypnotized the world” and that Israel’s support in Congress was “entirely directed at the Benjamins.”
Omar apologized after being heavily criticized for his remarks, but continued to openly take an anti-Israeli stance.
In 2019, Omar introduced a resolution supporting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. In 2021, she combined “atrocities” allegedly committed by the US and Israel with crimes committed by the Taliban and Hamas. Equating the US and its Middle Eastern ally with two terrorist groups drew condemnation from her own party leadership and again led to Omar’s apology. Later in 2021, Omar was one of nine members of the House of Representatives who voted against a $1 billion investment in Israel’s defense system.
Omar told a news conference on Wednesday: “Political differences in and of themselves are not and should not be grounds for expelling any member of the committee.”
“In modern American history, the punishment of removing a member of Congress from his committee positions has only been applied to the most egregious offenses,” Omar said, pointing to “those who have been convicted or charged with corruption, those who have engaged in bribery, sexual harassment.” . , encouragement of violence or other serious accusations”.
Asked by a reporter at a press conference if Omar wants to once again defend her past actions as she has done before, Omar replied, “I addressed it. I apologized. That was two and a half terms ago,” although neither Omar nor the reporter mentioned any specific action.
Email Ashley Oliver at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at @asholiver.
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texasstandard.news contributed to this report.
