More than seven months after the election and nearly five months after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, Republican Rep. Mo Brooks maintains former President Donald Trump is the rightful winner.
Brooks is a representative for the 5th Congressional District in Alabama who has been in the news over the past couple days as Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell was finally able to serve him with a lawsuit regarding the Jan. 6 riot after months of being unable to track him down.
Amid all the legal drama, Brooks talked to the Washington Examiner in a phone interview on Monday about the presidential race that remains a focus of Republican attention even several months later. He insisted Trump won the presidential race “if only lawful votes cast by eligible American citizens were counted.”
LOYALTY TEST: MOST TRUMP-ENDORSED REPUBLICANS DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT 2020 ELECTION FRAUD CLAIMS
He said the evidence to support the claim was “overwhelming and compelling,” and he claimed “somewhere in the neighborhood of 900,000 to 1.7 million noncitizens voted in the 2020 presidential election overwhelmingly for Joe Biden.” He did not provide evidence to support the claim, instead pointing the Washington Examiner to a floor speech he gave referencing that number.
Federal and state election officials have insisted there is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 contest. Trump’s own Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released a statement in November that said the presidential election was “the most secure in American history.”
Still, the Alabama Republican has long questioned the integrity of Biden’s electoral victory despite its confirmation in audits and recounts before the results were certified, as well as the dozens of legal challenges that were rejected in court. He even personally got involved in some of the litigation that fizzled out.
Brooks was the first member of Congress to announce his intent to object to the Electoral College certification. He spoke at the Jan. 6 rally that occurred just before lawmakers met to affirm the results, a ceremony that was then disrupted by a siege of Capitol Hill by rioters.
Trump and many of his Republican allies continue to question the integrity of the results of the election, and more recently, have turned their focus on the GOP-led Arizona Senate’s 2020 election audit in Maricopa County — encouraging lawmakers in other states to carry out their own reviews. Critics of these audits, including some GOP officials, assert they will further undermine confidence in the democratic process.
Brooks also said judges throughout the country “alter[ed] the election processes, even though they’re not empowered to” without the consent of Congress and state legislatures through various court decisions. He added this came after state officials instituted changes, including widespread mail-in voting, to accommodate voters during the coronavirus pandemic.
“There were millions, if not tens of millions, of ballots that were cast in violation of Article 1, Section 4” of the Constitution, he said, noting the document provides each state legislature to determine the time, places, and manner of how they hold their elections. He said all of those votes “should not have been counted at all because they were illegally cast in violation of law.”
In April, Trump endorsed Brooks for his bid to replace the outgoing Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby. He obtained the former president’s endorsement over Lynda Blanchard, who served as the former U.S. ambassador to Slovenia during the Trump administration.
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The former president has reportedly told people in his orbit that he could be “reinstated” as president by August. But legal experts say there is no legal mechanism for a former president to be reinstated and Jason Miller, a top adviser and spokesman to Trump, told Newsmax it is “not true” when asked to comment on the “story” that Trump would be reinstated by August.
Trump has publicly said he’ll endorse “MAGA” candidates, especially if it means targeting Republicans who are not sufficiently loyal to him and the movement.
