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Former House Speaker John Boehner has claimed that former President Donald Trump “incited that bloody insurrection” at the US Capitol on 6 January, in an excerpt from his upcoming memoir.
In Mr Boehner’s book, On The House: A Washington Memoir, which was obtained by The New York Times, the former House speaker blames Mr Trump for the Republican’s losing the Senate, which was decided by two runoff elections lost by the GOP earlier this year in Georgia.
He cited Mr Trump’s repeated public refusal to accept November’s election results, writing that it “not only cost Republicans the Senate but led to mob violence,” adding that “it was painful to watch,” according to the Times.
Mr Boehner, 71, a former Republican Ohio representative, also claimed that Mr Trump incited the riots at the US Capitol on 6 January, where five people were killed and several more were injured when a mob of pro-Trump supporters breached the building.
The riots came shortly after Mr Trump gave a speech nearby, and the then president was subsequently charged by the House with “incitement to insurrection” and faced his second impeachment trial a few weeks after leaving office.
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Mr Trump was acquitted of the charge by the majority-Republican Senate during the week-long trial, despite more than half of the senators voting for it.
According to the Times, Mr Boehner wrote in his book that Mr Trump “incited that bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons, perpetuated by the bull**** he’d been shovelling since he lost a fair election the previous November.”
The former house speaker added: “He claimed voter fraud without any evidence, and repeated those claims, taking advantage of the trust placed in him by his supporters and ultimately betraying that trust.”
When asked by the Times for comment about Mr Boehner’s comments, Mr Trump asked: “Was he drinking when he made this statement? Just another RINO who couldn’t do the job!”
The excerpts revealed on Wednesday are not the first from Mr Boehner’s book to cause controversy, as short descriptions of US politicians were included on the back cover of the memoir.
The cover includes short excerpts of Mr Boehner describing the politicians he came across during his time in the House from 1991 to 2015 and in the years since he retired.
In a short excerpt about Texas senator Ted Cruz included on the cover, Mr Boehner writes that “there is nothing more dangerous than a reckless a**hole who thinks he is smarter than everyone else.”
That was the second insult Mr Boehner has aimed at Mr Cruz in the space of a few weeks, as two sources told Axios in February that while recording the audiobook version of his memoir he stopped reading the book to exclaim: “Oh, and Ted Cruz, go f*** yourself.”
Mr Boehner’s memoir, which also features his thoughts on former President Barack Obama and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, is scheduled to be released on 13 April.
A blurb for the book states that Mr Boehner will share “colourful tales from the halls of power, the smoke-filled rooms around the halls of power and his fabled tour bus.”
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