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Senate Republican Leader: Trump 'Provoked' US Capitol Rampage

Ken Bredemeier

   WASHINGTON - U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell contended
   Tuesday that outgoing President Donald Trump "provoked" thousands of
   his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6 in a futile
   effort to block Congress from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden
   defeated Trump in the November election.

   "The mob was fed lies" that Trump had been cheated out of reelection,
   McConnell told the Senate a day ahead of Biden being sworn in on the
   steps of the Capitol as the country's 46th president.

   "They were provoked by the president and other powerful people,"
   McConnell said in an unusual rebuke of Trump, a fellow Republican who
   leaves office Wednesday after a single four-year term.

   McConnell said the rioters, who stormed past authorities and into the
   Capitol building after Trump urged them at a rally to confront
   lawmakers about the election outcome, "tried to use fear and violence."
   But he said that lawmakers refused to give them "veto power over our
   nation, not even for one night."

   Some of the rioters vandalized the building, ransacked congressional
   offices and scuffled with police in the mayhem that left five people
   dead, including a police officer whose death is being investigated as a
   homicide. More than 100 rioters have been charged with various offenses
   and McConnell said 275 are under investigation.

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