Marjorie Taylor Greene says she has racked up more than $60,000 in fines for refusing to wear a mask in Congress.
The congresswoman admitted she has not received the Covid vaccination while bragging about defying Nancy Pelosi’s mask mandate.
“She’s [Pelosi] fined me over $60,500 in mask fines. I refuse to wear a mask. And Chris, I have to tell you something else, I’m not vaccinated,” Ms Greene said in an interview on Newsmax.
“And I will be standing strong, standing up for the people across this country that refuse to get vaccinated,” she added.
The latest tally marks a 300 per cent increase since September, when it was revealed Ms Taylor Greene had been fined $15,000 for refusing to wear a mask in the House of Representatives.
The penalty for a first offence against the chamber’s mask rule is a warning, followed by a $500 fine for the second offence. Each additional penalty after that is $2,500, suggesting she has been pinged at least 25 times to get a bill over $60,000.
Ms Taylor Greene, who has sued over the fines for not wearing a mask, is among several GOP protesters against the reinstated mandate from the Office of the Attending Physician.
Capitol police chief Thomas Manger ordered officers to report any members of Congress who refuse to wear a mask, warning they could be subject to arrest for unlawful entry under DC Code 22-3302.
While Ms Taylor Greene hasn’t been cuffed for going maskless, she has been running up the bill while calling on more Republicans to refuse the "bulls***".
As part of her anti-mandate campaign, Ms Taylor Greene has posted parody videos directing people to which side of the velvet rope in Congress allowed people to wear masks. The Senate side of the building had not issued a mask mandate of its own.
"Dr [Brian] Monahan has no authority to fine us or tell members that we can’t vote if we aren’t wearing a mask," she said in a July tweet.
"In other words, Dr Monahan is just another Pelosi puppet and is guilty of medical malpractice."
While Ms Greene has continued her campaign against the Speaker’s “medical malpractice”, she has tamped down the rhetoric from when she compared the mask mandates to the Holocaust in May.
“You know, we can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star,” the Republican told conservative podcaster David Brody, “and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put on trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany, and this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”
While she defended the comments at first, she apologised three weeks later after widespread criticism.
