Poor Mo Brooks. Hardly the sharpest tool in the GOP's legislative shed to begin with, the Alabama congressman who once tweeted his email password to hundreds of thousands of people was notified by the Justice Department on Tuesday that he's on his own when it comes to the ongoing lawsuit filed by his colleague, Rep. Eric Swalwell (Calif.). The suit alleges Brooks and other GOP figures were directly responsible for inciting the Jan. 6 attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol building.
Brooks, who encouraged the budding insurrectionists to "start taking down names and kicking ass" during the Stop the Steal rally that preempted the riot, had initially argued that he spoke in his capacity as a United States Congressman, and is therefore immune from being personally named in a lawsuit, as prescribed in what's known as the Westfall Act. Accordingly, Brooks argued, he should be replaced with the United States as a defendant in the suit — necessitating the DOJ to serve as defense attorney — and the suit should then be dropped entirely.
