Lansing, Mitch. (AP) – A retired Michigan congressman left the Republican Party on Monday and said he was becoming independent in a bid to thwart Democrat Joe Biden’s victory against President Donald Trump.
Triton’s representative Paul Mitchell concluded His second and final term. He wrote a letter to Republican National Committee chairwoman Rona McDonnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, on the same day voters formalized Biden’s victory.
“It is unacceptable for political candidates to regard our electoral system as a third world nation and to provoke distrust of fundamental issues such as the sanctity of our votes,” he said.
Mitchell, 64, said he voted for Trump despite some reservations about four more years of his leadership. He criticized GOP leaders for tolerating “unsubstantiated conspiracy theories” without safeguarding a secure electoral process. Rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court – he did not join the 106 House Republicans who signed one of the Texas lawsuits – which sought to invalidate decisions in Michigan and three other states.
“I believe that it is not the original political views on constitutional or voting integrity that motivate many in the party leadership to support efforts to ‘stop stealing’, which is very disappointing to me,” Mitchell wrote. “As elected members of Congress, we swear to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States’ and not to protect or defend the political interests of any individual, be it the President or anyone else, a nation that harms our loved ones.”
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