Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right Georgia Republican, said on Friday night that she would resign from Congress in January.

Her announcement came days after President Trump branded her a “traitor” for breaking with him and helping compel the justice department to release its files related to Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender.

Greene, who was elected in 2020 and positioned herself as a die-hard Trump supporter until a series of recent ruptures with the President on a variety of issues, made the abrupt announcement in a video and statement she posted online, filmed from her home in Georgia, her Christmas tree on display behind her.

“Loyalty should be a two-way street, and we should be able to vote our conscience and represent our district’s interest,” Greene wrote in a long post. She said that if she had been cast aside by “MAGA Inc”, it was indicative that “many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well”.

In the post, Greene said her last day in office would be January 5.

In a phone interview on Friday night with an ABC News reporter, Trump called Greene’s plans “great news for the country”.

It is extremely unusual for a member of Congress to up and leave in the middle of a term, barring an illness or some extenuating circumstance that makes it impossible to carry on.

But Greene said she had made the decision to leave because she did not want to endure a “hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms”.

She added: “I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better.”

Her impending departure will shrink the already slim Republican House majority, bringing it down to 218 members until her seat in a deep-red district can be filled.

Greene, who arrived in Congress in 2021 as something of a pariah in her own party, has tried out many different ways of doing the job. She carved out a singular space on Capitol Hill as part of a growing group of lawmakers at both extremes of the ideological spectrum who are less interested in legislating and building up seniority in leadership suites and more interested in influencing politics from the outside, using social media to troll adversaries, building brands and stoking outrage.

New York Times News Service