Susan Walsh/AP
- Before Marjorie Taylor Greene ran for office, she traveled to the US Capitol and taunted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
- In a deleted video unearthed by CNN, Greene insulted Ocasio-Cortez and vandalized her guestbook.
- One of Greene's associates, Anthony Aguero, entered the Capitol with pro-Trump rioters on Jan. 6.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Before Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene ran for office, she and a few associates traveled to the US Capitol and taunted Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outside her office in the Capitol building, according to a since-deleted video unearthed by CNN's KFile on Friday.
Greene, then a right-wing activist, was joined by her close associate, Anthony Aguero, who entered the Capitol with pro-Trump rioters on Jan. 6, 2021.
"We're going to go see, we're going to visit, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Crazy eyes. Crazy eyes. Nutty. Cortez," Greene tells her audience on Facebook live.
The group filmed themselves vandalizing the congresswoman's guestbook with pro-Trump messages and insults, and demanding that the congresswoman "come out" and "face" them. Greene wrote "you're a traitor" and drew a picture of the US-Mexico border wall in the book and called to Ocasio-Cortez through the mail slot in her locked door.
Greene and her associates taunted Ocasio-Cortez and her staffers, calling the New York lawmaker a "baby" and referring to her office as a "daycare" and a "college sorority" because of a wall of post-it note messages left outside her office door by supporters.
Greene also encouraged her followers to travel to the Capitol and confront Democratic lawmakers.
"This needs to happen, like, every week," she said. "I want you to imagine if every single week, every single day, people like us showed up and did this and walked around and said here's what we're pissed off about, here's what we demand."
She added later, "We own this building, we're the taxpayers. We can do whatever we want."
At one point a security official approached the group and asked whether they were "threatening" the lawmaker, to which Greene's associates responded that they were "peaceful" and "we love you guys," referring to the security officials.
Spokespeople for Greene and GOP leader Kevin McCarthy didn't immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.
-andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) May 14, 2021
Since being elected to represent a deep-red district in Northeast Georgia, Greene has repeatedly pursued Ocasio-Cortez, demanding she engage in a debate over her Green New Deal policy. On Wednesday, Greene followed the New Yorker down a hallway in the Capitol and shouted after her as Ocasio-Cortez walked away.
"You don't care about the American people," Greene shouted at Ocasio-Cortez. "Why do you support terrorists and antifa?"
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters on Thursday that Greene should be investigated by the House Ethics Committee for her "verbal assault" and "abuse" of Ocasio-Cortez.
"This is beneath the dignity of a person serving in the Congress of the United States and is a cause for trauma and fear among members, especially on the heels of an insurrection in which the minority in the committee yesterday denied ever happened," Pelosi said.
Ocasio-Cortez on Friday called Greene "deeply unwell" and said her aggressive behavior is a serious cause for concern among Democratic lawmakers. And she argued that Greene's behavior is being condoned by GOP leadership.
"The fact that Kevin McCarthy, the House @GOPLeader, stripped Justin Amash of all committee seats for criticizing Trump, but has worked to protect this person from consequences (including pretending he doesn't see it) tells you this is happening with the support of GOP leadership," she tweeted in response to the video.