Brooks was the representative for Alabama’s 5th congressional district and was a Republican. He served from 2011 to 2022.
Our work to hold Congress accountable only matters if elections are decided by counting votes. President Trump, his senior government advisors, and Republican legislators collaborated to have the 2020 presidential election decided instead by incumbent politicians running in the very same election. Their attempts to suppress entire state-certified vote counts without adjudication in the courts and using a disinformation campaign of lies and conspiracy theories was a months-long, multifarious attempted coup.
Brooks was a “ringleader” among the Republican legislators who participated in the attempted coup. Shortly after the election, Brooks joined a case before the Supreme Court calling for all the votes for president in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — states that were narrowly won by Democrats — to be discarded, in order to change the outcome of the election, based on lies and a preposterous legal argument which the Supreme Court rejected. (Following the rejection of several related cases before the Supreme Court, another legislator who joined the case called for violence.) Brooks was also a part of a coordinated campaign by the Trump Administration to pressure the Vice President to exclude some Democratic states from the electoral count rather than follow the procedure set in law in which Congress may vote to exclude electors, and other extrajudicial strategies to suppress certified election results. On January 6, 2021 in the hours after the violent insurrection at the Capitol, Brooks voted to reject the state-certified election results of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania (states narrowly won by Democrats), which could have changed the outcome of the election. These legislators have generally changed their story after their vote, claiming it was merely a protest and not intended to change the outcome of the election as they clearly sought prior to the vote. The January 6, 2021 violent insurrection at the Capitol, led on the front lines by militant white supremacy groups, attempted to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from taking office by disrupting Congress’s count of electors. In the days after Jan. 6, Brooks requested from President Trump a pardon for crimes he may have committed in attempting to change the result of the election in Trump’s favor.
![Photo of Rep. Mo Brooks [R-AL5, 2011-2022]](/static/legislator-photos/412395-200px.jpeg)
Analysis
Legislative Metrics
Read our 2022 Report Card for Brooks.
Ideology–Leadership Chart
Brooks is shown as a purple triangle ▲ in our ideology-leadership chart below. Each dot was a member of the House of Representatives in 2022 positioned according to our ideology score (left to right) and our leadership score (leaders are toward the top).
The chart is based on the bills Brooks sponsored and cosponsored from Jan 3, 2017 to Dec 27, 2022. See full analysis methodology.
Enacted Legislation
Brooks was the primary sponsor of 1 bill that was enacted:
Does 1 not sound like a lot? Very few bills are ever enacted — most legislators sponsor only a handful that are signed into law. But there are other legislative activities that we don’t track that are also important, including offering amendments, committee work and oversight of the other branches, and constituent services.
We consider a bill enacted if one of the following is true: a) it is enacted itself, b) it has a companion bill in the other chamber (as identified by Congress) which was enacted, or c) if at least about half of its provisions were incorporated into bills that were enacted (as determined by an automated text analysis, applicable beginning with bills in the 110th Congress).
Bills Sponsored
Issue Areas
Brooks sponsored bills primarily in these issue areas:
Immigration (48%) Crime and Law Enforcement (19%) Government Operations and Politics (11%) Economics and Public Finance (7%) Social Welfare (7%) Transportation and Public Works (7%)
Recently Introduced Bills
Brooks recently introduced the following legislation:
- H.R. 7356 (117th): TPS Reform Act of 2022
- H.R. 6829 (117th): Freedom to Fly Maskless Act of 2022
- H.R. 6378 (117th): Local Control Act
- H.R. 5835 (117th): Defund Federal Vaccine Mandates Act
- H.R. 4684 (117th): Civilian Aviation Certification Equity Act of 2021
- H.R. 4080 (117th): China COVID–19 Restitution Act
- H.R. 3375 (117th): No Sanctuary for Criminals Act
View All » | View Cosponsors »
Most legislation has no activity after being introduced.
Voting Record
Key Votes
Missed Votes
From Jan 2011 to Dec 2022, Brooks missed 150 of 7,297 roll call votes, which is 2.1%. This is on par with the median of 2.0% among the lifetime records of representatives serving in Dec 2022. The chart below reports missed votes over time.
We don’t track why legislators miss votes, but it’s often due to medical absenses, major life events, and running for higher office.
Primary Sources
The information on this page is originally sourced from a variety of materials, including:
- unitedstates/congress-legislators, a community project gathering congressional information
- The House and Senate websites, for committee membership and voting records
- GPO Member Guide for the photo
- GovInfo.gov, for sponsored bills
