Republican House members, led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., in a letter co-signed by 13 colleagues, are calling on Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser to immediately fire the deputy warden of the D.C. jail housing the Jan. 6 pretrial defendants.
Kathleen Landerkin, deputy warden of operations at the Central Treatment Facility (CTF) in Washington, D.C., has been accused by Greene of having overseen the alleged torture of Jan. 6 pretrial defendants. Also, Greene has exposed tweets showing political animus against Trump supporters long before the events of Jan. 6, including a tweet on a since-deleted account that reportedly read in November 2019: "f**k every who supports Trump."
''We did a deep dive into her Twitter account, which she has now canceled, and her views are deeply disturbing," Greene told Newsmax's "Greg Kelly Reports" earlier this week.
"She not only hates Trump and his supporters, but she also doesn't believe in a border wall; yet, she held these Jan. 6 defendants in complete solitary confinement for months and months.
''She not only hates Trump, but she also doesn't like white people and wants them to be extinct. She said that in one of her tweets.
''She also doesn't like Bible verses on her Twitter timeline and many other disturbing things. So we saved all of her tweets and we'll be going after Kathleen Landerkin. She needs to be fired. Her political bias is dangerous for pretrial defendants who are housed in the D.C. jail."
That Newsmax appearance Tuesday night preceded her letter to the D.C. mayor officially calling for Landerkin's firing Thursday.
It also follows Greene's visit to the D.C. jail with fellow Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas. Landerkin tried to claim "members of Congress were trespassers," filing those charges in July, according to a report issued by Greene and Gohmert on their findings about the visit to the D.C. jail.
"Deputy Warden Landerkin has expressed hatred for supporters of former President Trump, and she should be removed from her position of trust that has allowed her to oversee abuse of Trump supporters in the D.C. jail," Gohmert, a signatory of the letter, wrote in a statement. "Since she has expressed her motivation so starkly for the way the Jan. 6 inmates have been treated, their complaints need to be given full consideration and appropriate response after she is removed from her position."
Landerkin was mentioned 19 times in the Greene-Gohmert report titled "Unusually Cruel: An Eyewitness Report From Inside the D.C. Jail."
"Deputy Warden Landerkin is using her position to torture her political opponents in a system where justice is supposed to be blind," Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., a co-signer of the letter, wrote in a statement.
The other signatories: Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.; Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.; Rep. Bob Good, R-Va.; Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md.; Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C.; Rep. Barry Moore, R-Ala.; Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis.; Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.; Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo.; Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa.; and Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas.
"The Constitution set out to establish a system where justice would be delivered swiftly, impartially, and the severity of the punishment would be equal to the severity of the crime — absent of any cruel and unusual punishment," Cloud wrote in a statement. "Deputy Warden Landerkin has not lived up to the Constitutional standard.
"She's instead demonstrated extreme personal bias in subjecting non-violent first time offenders who trespassed on the Capitol at a greater level than many of the most heinous criminals. She must be removed."
"People that rioted at the Capitol on Jan. 6 are being treated unbelievably, like political prisoners for the crimes that they've committed,'' Greene told host Greg Kelly.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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