Republican Congressman Paul Mitchell announced Monday that he is leaving the GOP, citing the aggressive efforts by President Donald Trump and others in the party to overturn the November election that Democrat Joe Biden won.
“It is unacceptable for political candidates to treat our election system as though we are a third-world nation and incite distrust of something so basic as the sanctity of our vote,” the Michigan legislator wrote in a letter to Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, according to The Hill.
Mitchell’s surprise announcement came on the same day that the Electoral College affirmed Biden’s victory and a week after 126 House Republicans joined a lawsuit filed by the Texas attorney general that called on the U.S. Supreme Court to upend the Democrat’s win in four states including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — and award those electors to Trump.
“Continuing this circus is just ... so damaging ... so unproductive ... so narcissistic...what about our country?” Mitchell told CNN.
Mitchell, who represents Michigan’s 10th District, was elected to the House in 2016 and is reportedly one of its wealthiest members.
In 2019, he announced he would retire at the end of the congressional session and not seek a third term.
There was no indication whether he would switch to the Democratic Party.
Mitchell’s parting statement was critical of the president and pointed to the congressman’s belief that Trump should have willingly accepted the results despite the GOP’s unfavorable outcome.
“Further, it is unacceptable for the president to attack the Supreme Court of the United States because its judges, both liberal and conservative, did not rule with his side or that ‘the Court failed him.’ It was our Founding Fathers’ objective to insulate the Supreme Court from such blatant political motivations.”
Mitchell seemed to agree that there may have been “administrative errors and even some fraudulent voting [that] likely occurred” because of unprecedented voter turnout. “However, the president and his legal team have failed to provide substantive evidence of fraud or administrative failure on a scale large enough to impact the outcome of the election,” he wrote.
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