Early Thursday evening, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shared a video on Twitter of her in a heated exchanged about gun control with three young activists outside the Capitol earlier that day.
In the tweet, Greene, a Georgia Republican, also wrote, "These foolish cowards want the government to take away guns & the rights of parents to defend their children in schools."
Roughly 25 minutes later, Marianna Pecora, who was one of the people arguing with Greene in the video, replied: "Did she literally just tweet out the video of her kicking me?"
Video shows a heated conversation on gun control
Pecora, 18, is the deputy communications director for Voters of Tomorrow, a group focused on youth voter turnout. She and others from her group were in Washington, D.C., this week to lobby for youth rights.
In the 2:54 minute clip, Pecora appears to have walked in front of Greene to ask, "How does the second amendment prevent gun violence?" while filming the congresswoman's reaction.
Greene responded, "Excuse me, out of the way, excuse me," to which Pecora begins to stumble and said, "Oh my God." Later, Pecora moves out of the way and accuses the congresswoman of kicking her.
The video does not directly show physical contact between Pecora and Greene.
The sides don't agree on what happened
Nick Dyer, Greene's communications director, told NPR that the allegation that Greene kicked Pecora was "absolutely ridiculous" and called it a "lie."
Pecora told NPR she is physically fine, but "a little shaken" emotionally.
"It's incredibly disheartening to me that a member of Congress has so little respect for the people of our country that she finds it acceptable to turn to trying to hurt them," she wrote in an email.
On Thursday evening, Santiago Mayer, the executive director of Voters of Tomorrow who was also involved in the verbal altercation, said, "To answer the most prevalent question about pressing charges: we're talking to our legal team and keeping our options open."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
