Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) on Wednesday issued a blistering response to former President Trump’s decision to unendorse him in the Alabama Senate race, accusing Trump of asking him to remove President Biden from the White House following the 2020 election despite his protests.
The statement from Brooks, a Trump ally that spoke at his rally on Jan. 6 and was involved in efforts to block the certification of election results that day, seems to suggest that Trump asked for the lawmaker’s involvement in unwinding Biden’s victory even after the attack on the Capitol.
“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 in a statement. “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’s statement comes hours after Trump pulled his endorsement of the lawmaker as he runs for an open Senate seat in the state’s Republican primary this year.
Trump in his announcement said Brooks had “hired a new campaign staff who ‘brilliantly’ convinced him to ‘stop talking about the 2020 Election.”
“Election Fraud must be captured and stopped, or we won’t have a Country anymore,” Trump said in his statement. “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. I don’t think the great people of Alabama will disagree with me.”
The Department of Justice has refuted Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Brooks responded that when Trump asked him to help him overturn the election he knew “full well that it might cause President Trump to rescind his endorsement.”
“But I took a sworn oath to defend and protect the U.S. Constitution. I honor my oath. That is the way I am. I break my sworn oath for no man,” Brooks said. “I’m still the most conservative candidate in the race.”
The only legal way America can prevent 2020’s “election debacle,” Brooks said,”is for patriotic Americans to focus on and win the 2022 and 2024 elections so that we have the power to enact laws that give us honest and accurate elections.”
While Brooks in his statement criticized Trump’s efforts after Jan. 6, he was reportedly involved in planning leading up to the day.
A Rolling Stone article in October didn’t directly tie lawmakers to the violent assault, but two sources who spoke to the outlet detailed multiple meetings with members of Congress to coordinate contesting the election results and planning the rallies that preceded the attack.
They outlined “dozens” of planning briefings, listing Brooks among those who either participated or sent top staffers.
And Ali Alexander, a Stop the Steal founder who secured a permit to protest on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, has been vocal about his alleged coordination with lawmakers, posting live streams saying he had discussions with Brooks along with two other GOP lawmakers.
“I was the one that came up with the Jan. 6 idea,” Alexander said in a video.
“We four schemed up of putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting,” he added.
Brooks has also used footage from his speech at the Jan. 6 rally in a recent campaign ad, later telling viewers, “On January 6th, I proudly stood with President Trump in the fight against voter fraud.”
Updated: 2:58 p.m.