David Hogg calls for Marjorie Taylor Greene to resign over ‘false flag’ comments on Parkland killings

Newly elected Republican congresswoman once shared claim that Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton 'need another school shooting’ to implement gun control

Newly elected Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is facing more calls for her resignation after the re-emergence of comments from 2018 in which she appeared to support a conspiracy theory that the deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida was a “false flag” event. 

David Hogg, a gun control activist and survivor of the attack that killed 17 people and and injured more than a dozen others, said she should resign. The congresswoman – among GOP lawmakers who supported efforts to reject millions of votes in the 2020 presidential election – has also faced calls to resign in the wake of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January.

A string of Facebook comments uncovered by Media Matters shows the now-congresswoman agreeing with others under an article about Broward County sheriff’s deputy Scot Peterson, who was stationed at the school, receiving a pension after retiring amid the aftermath of the killings.

One commenter wrote: “It’s called a pay off to keep his mouth shut since it was a false flag planned shooting.”

Under the comment, Greene said: “Exactly."

Another commenter said: "Kick back for going along with the evil plan. You know it's not for doing a good job.”

Greene replied under that comment: “My thoughts exactly!! Paid to do what he did and keep his mouth shut!”

The Georgia congresswoman – an ardent supporter of Donald Trump who supported QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracies and shared anti-Muslim and transphobic posts in the run-up to her campaign – has since claimed that the conspiracies do not represent her beliefs.

"I was just one of those people, just like millions of other Americans, that just started looking at other information," she told Fox News after she won the GOP primary in 2020. “And so, yeah, there was a time there for a while that I had read about Q, posted about it, talked about it, which is some of these videos you've seen come out. But once I started finding misinformation, I decided that I would choose another path.”

In the wake of the Parkland killings, which included 14 students and three school staff members, dozens of right-wing conspiracies circulated on social media, including the false insistence that Hogg and others are “crisis actors” and that the event was a hoax to undermine gun rights.

On 9 December 2018, she claimed that she was told that “Nancy Pelosi tells Hillary Clinton several times a month that ‘we need another school shooting’ in order to persuade the public to want strict gun control.”

Following the Media Matters report on Tuesday, others weighed in to condemn the congresswoman’s remarks.

Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was killed in the attacks, wrote to the congresswoman on Twitter, saying: “We have never met. It appears you think or at one time thought the school shooting in Florida was a false flag. I know you have met Parkland parents. This is my daughter Jaime, she was killed that day.  Do you still believe this?  Why would you say this?”

The student-led gun control organisation March for Our Lives said: “You should be ashamed of yourself and resign from congress. Conspiracy theorists don’t deserve a seat in the people’s house.”