Rep. Mo Brooks revealed in a public statement last week that former President Donald Trump had repeatedly, and recently, raised the idea of attempting to rescind the 2020 election results and reinstall him as president.
Trump tried to stage a coup d’etat in plain sight and thanks to politicians like Brooks and countless other spineless, soul-less Republican sycophants, he’s gotten away with it so far.
Brooks, whose Twitter handle was “Endorsed by President Trump,” is a Freedom Caucus firebrand and one of the GOP’s most vocal supporters of overturning the 2020 election results, which would amount to a coup d’etat.
On Wednesday, Trump rescinded his endorsement of Brooks, who is running for an open Senate seat in this year’s Republican primary.
Trump said Brooks went “woke” when he suggested focusing on future elections and stopping talk about the former president’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Trump said that when Brooks told him to “put that behind you” it created a sudden rift between himself and the
“Very sad but since he decided to go in another direction, so have I, and I am hereby withdrawing my endorsement of Mo Brooks for the Senate,” said Trump, who promised a new endorsement soon.
Brooks’s sudden turn against Trump was an unexpected gift for the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 that may supercharge its probe and reinforce the case it has started to lay out against the former President.
The Alabama Republican’s stunning allegation just hours after Trump ‘unendorsed’ his flagging Senate candidacy, put renewed pressure on House investigators to obtain testimony from recalcitrant Republican colleagues.
“President Trump asked me to rescind the 2020 elections, immediately remove Joe Biden from the White House, immediately put President Trump back in the White House, and hold a new special election for the presidency,” Brooks said. “As a lawyer, I’ve repeatedly advised President Trump that January 6 was the final election contest verdict and neither the U.S. Constitution nor the U.S. Code permit what President Trump asks. Period.”
Brooks said Trump fell for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell’s “ploys” despite the fact that the former president and top Senate Republican haven’t spoken since December 2020.
Trump repeatedly has derided McConnell, calling him “Old Crow,” byt Brooks insisted that McConnell manipulated Trump.
Back in December, Brooks was the first House Republican to say that he would object to certain states’ electors during the congressional Electoral College certification but until last week, Brooks’ claim to fame was his fiery speech — while wearing body armor — at the January 6 rally where the congressman incited the mob saying, “today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass!”
Brooks’ performance as the ‘Coup Klutz Clown’ of the January 6 Capitol attack landed him Trump’s endorsement in the 2022 Alabama Senate race.
But it’s also earned him legal issues. California Rep. Eric Swalwell sued Brooks and others earlier this year for fomenting the Jan. 6 riot.
“I felt a sense of betrayal on the part of my Republican colleagues in Congress,” said New Jersey Congresswoman Bonnie Watson-Coleman, who contracted COVID while hiding with fellow Congress members and their staffers from the violent mob of Trump-loving terrorists. “Their staff refused to wear masks and did not have enough respect for the safety and security of others.”
The Justice Department this week refused Brooks’ request to shield him from the lawsuit, in part because he’d basically admitted he was thinking about winning elections—not doing his job—when he started his rally chant.
Ironically, it was Brooks himself who made statements under oath in an effort to evade Swalwell’s lawsuit that turned the Alabama Republican’s defense into a legal liability.
It was a stunning allegation that would show Trump not only attempted to subvert the 2020 election while in office but that he is extracting promises from allies to try again if they take power in 2023.
The House select committee is investigating whether it has the full record and whether Trump communicated that day through back channels, phones of aides, or personal disposable phones, according to people familiar with the probe.
Internal White House records from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that were turned over to the House select committee show a gap in President Donald Trump’s phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being violently assaulted, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News.
The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes on Jan. 6, 2021 — from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. — means the committee has no record of his phone conversations as his supporters descended on the Capitol, battled overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building, prompting lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for safety.
The 11 pages of records, which consist of the president’s official daily diary and the White House switchboard call logs, were turned over by the National Archives earlier this year to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
The records show that Trump was active on the phone for part of the day, documenting conversations that he had with at least eight people in the morning and 11 people that evening.
The seven-hour gap also stands in stark contrast to the extensive public reporting about phone conversations he had with allies during the attack, such as a call Trump made to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — seeking to talk to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) — and a phone conversation he had with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Experts say that any effort to undo the election at the point where Brooks puts Trump seeking official action to ‘rescind’ Biden’s victory would be considered unlawful.
“There is no way to overturn the election today. And a special election — I mean, it’s not in the statutes. It’s not in the Constitution. I don’t know where that would come from,” said Neil Eggleston, who served as White House counsel under former President Obama and as an investigator on the House select committee probing the Iran-Contra scandal.
“As I think Mr. Brooks said he told the president, the matter was over on Jan. 6, when Congress certified the election,” Eggleston said. “In my view, it was over in December when all the states reported their electors and what happened on January 6 was a formality. But at the very latest it ended on Jan. 6.”
It’s unclear whether the select committee will pursue Brooks’ claims in its investigation, but the lawmaker’s admission adds red meat to the committee’s findings and could rejuvenate momentum for its probe.
“It adds urgency to the work of the Jan. 6 committee,” said Jessica Levinson, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University. She added that it fits a trend in the information that has come out about Trump’s efforts to remain in office.
“There’s a well-documented pressure campaign by the former president when it comes to federal officials, state officials, local officials to try and subvert the outcome of the 2020 election. But the evidence just keeps coming,” said Levinson, who added that it fits a trend in the information that has come out about Trump’s efforts to remain in office.
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