Supporters of US President Donald Trump will gather outside the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Probal Rashid | LightRocket | Getty Images
President Donald Trump provoked swarms of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.
The comments on the Senate floor came as Kentucky Republican and Senate Ministerial Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., worked to uncover details about Trump’s upcoming impeachment trial. Trump was impeached last week in the Democrat-led House in a vote of 232-197, with 10 Republicans voting for impeachment.
Trump is the only president in US history to have been impeached twice.
“The crowd was fed lies,” McConnell told the room, which had been evacuated two weeks earlier when rioters raided the building. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”
The GOP leader directly linked the Republican president’s rhetoric to the January 6 riot that left five dead, the day before President-elect Joe Biden was to be sworn in as the 46th president.
McConnell has rejected pressure from the Democrats to hold the impeachment process before Trump leaves office, but he has told his colleagues he is not sure Trump should be convicted in the Senate for instigating the riot.
McConnell’s comments also suggested that other leaders were responsible for the attack. Critics have called on a number of lawmakers, most notably GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, to step down after objecting to major states’ election results.
McConnell had congratulated Biden on his victory in mid-December, more than a month after the November 3 election.
The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on McConnell’s latest comments.
Trump, who urged the crowd at a rally outside the White House to “fight like hell” and go to the Capitol to reverse the 2020 election, has insisted that his comments just before the riot are “entirely justified” goods.
In that speech, Trump reiterated the inflammatory and false claim that he had been deprived of re-election by widespread electoral fraud. He once again vowed that he would never give in to Biden, urging his supporters to go to the Capitol to “ encourage ” Republican lawmakers who had vowed to object to the results.
“We’re probably not going to cheer so much for some of them, because you will never take our country back with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong,” Trump said.
Many of his supporters attending that meeting walked straight across the National Mall to the Capitol, where a joint session of Congress had been convened to confirm the victory of Biden’s Electoral College. Rioters broke through barricades and lines of law enforcement and forced their way into the Capitol, forcing Congress into hiding. Among them was Vice President Mike Pence, who chaired the event.
Following McConnell’s comments on Tuesday, Schumer said on the Senate floor that “Donald Trump should never again be eligible to run for office.”
“Healing and unity will come only when there is truth and responsibility,” said Schumer.
“There will be an impeachment trial in the United States Senate, there will be a vote to convict the president for serious crimes and felonies, and if the president is convicted, there will be a vote to prevent him from fleeing again,” said Schumer. .
Trump, who has acknowledged the impending end of his one term in office without conceding to Biden, has not called his successor and has not invited the Democratic president-elect to the White House before the inauguration.
Pence called Vice President Kamala Harris last week to congratulate her and offer his assistance before being sworn in.