In a letter to Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on Thursday, U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) demanded the firing of a top official at the D.C. Department of Corrections.
Greene last weekend posted a series of hateful anti-Trump, anti-Republican tweets by Kathleen Landerkin, the deputy warden of the Correctional Treatment Facility. Dozens of Donald Trump supporters arrested and charged for their involvement in the January 6 protest at the Capitol have been held at the CTF, denied bail by federal judges at the request of Joe Biden’s Justice Department. Several Trump supporters have been detained in the D.C. jail for more than 10 months as trials are pushed into the middle of 2022.
Detainees have been subjected to tortuous conditions, including months in solitary confinement, physical assaults, racially-charged verbal abuse, no access to family, and limited access to their attorneys. Guards deny access to grooming and health care services; in November, a federal judge released one inmate who suffers from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after jail officials repeatedly withheld treatment.
“As Members of Congress charged with the administration of the District of Columbia, we strongly implore you to remove Landerkin from this critical position,” Greene’s letter, signed by 12 other Republican House members, said. “Her biased comments over the better part of the last decade would evoke serious concerns from the American people, who are watching the treatment of inmates—inmates who are presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
Landerkin suspended her Twitter account shortly after Greene posted some of her more inflammatory posts.
Greene is one of just a handful of Republican House members advocating on behalf of these political prisoners; she released a lengthy report last week detailing what she witnessed in the jail during a visit—which D.C. prison officials tried to prevent—last month. Republican leaders in the House and Senate refuse to acknowledge the political prison or the plight of hundreds of Americans ensnared in the Justice Department’s vengeful and abusive investigation into the Capitol protest.
Read the text of Greene’s letter here: