A U.S. House member from Michigan has quit the Republican Party over its support for President Trump’s legal challenges to the 2020 presidential election.
Rep. Paul Mitchell told CNN in an interview released Monday that he has asked the Clerk of the House to change his party affiliation to “independent.”
He also sent GOP leaders a letter saying he is ending his “engagement and association with the Republican Party at both the national and state level” over the election wars, according to CNN.
“This party has to stand up for democracy first, for our Constitution first, and not political considerations,” Mr. Mitchell said in his interview.
“Not to protect a candidate. Not simply for raw political power, and that’s what I feel is going on and I’ve had enough,” he concluded.
In his letter to party leaders, which was sent Monday, Mr. Mitchell called it unacceptable conspiracy-mongering that the party’s had supported and/or indulged of Mr. Trump’s belief he really won the election but fraud stole it.
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,” he wrote.
Mr. Mitchell, who announced in summer 2019 that he would not seek a third term in Congress, told Republican leaders that they had been “collectively sit(ting) back and tolerat(ing) unfounded conspiracy theories and ’stop the steal’ rallies without speaking out for our electoral process.”
He wrote that the final straw was “the leadership of the Republican Party and our Republican Conference in the House actively participating in at least some of those efforts.”
Last week, a majority of the House Republican Caucus — 126 members including the top leaders, signed onto a lawsuit by Texas asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the election results on four key swings states won by Democrat Joseph R. Biden.
A unanimous court refused to do so, to the surprise of few to no conservative legal scholars.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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