Earlier Thursday, Amash tweeted a Detroit News story that quoted a top aide as saying that “he hasn’t been campaigning for any office and doesn’t plan to seek the nomination for any office.”
The aide indicated that Amash did not intend to seek the Libertarian Party nomination for his congressional seat when the state party holds its convention this weekend.
Amash, who was elected in the tea party wave of 2010, relayed his rationale for leaving the Republican Party in a July 2019 Washington Post op-ed. He described himself as a lifelong Republican who had grown disenchanted with party politics and frightened by a two-party system that has “evolved into an existential threat to American principles and institutions.”
His departure from the GOP came weeks after he posted tweets arguing that then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III documented “impeachable conduct” in his report on Trump’s campaign and Russian interference in the 2016 election. In subsequent public statements, Amash challenged colleagues from both parties to act.
In tweets, Amash said the path to victory was narrower than he thought, citing hurdles such as a media “dominated by voices strongly averse to the political risks posed by a viable third candidate” and a public “understandably more interested in what life will look like tomorrow than they are in broader policy debates.”
Donna Cassata and David Weigel contributed to this report.
