Brian Sicknick's mother scolded Kevin McCarthy for excusing Trump over Capitol riots: new audio

House minority leader Kevin McCarthy told two police officers and the mother of a third who died after the Jan. 6 insurrection that Donald Trump had no idea his supporters had carried out the attack.

Witnesses have testified before the House select committee that the former president watched the riot for hours on television, but McCarthy claimed that Trump was unaware of the violence when he spoke to him by phone that afternoon, according to secret audio recorded by police officer Michael Fanone, reported CNN.

“I’m just telling you from my phone call, I don’t know that he did know that,” McCarthy told the officers during a private June 2021 meeting.

Fanone detailed the meeting in his new book, “Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul.”

The meeting took place as McCarthy was “backing off on a pledge to appoint Republicans to the special January 6 Committee,” Fanone wrote.

“The only reason McCarthy had agreed to meet with us was because he’d been getting heat for refusing to see me,” Fanone added.

The recording also reveals that the mother of the late Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick, who died a day after the riot, challenged McCarthy's claims about the former president.

“He already knew what was going on,” Gladys Sicknick said in the recording. “People were fighting for hours and hours and hours. This doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Fanone pushed back on McCarthy claiming credit for Trump's statement urging his supporters to go home.

“I asked McCarthy why he would take credit for Trump’s pathetic, half-hearted late-afternoon video address to his followers," Fanone wrote. "I said, ‘Trump says to his people, ‘This is what happens when you steal an election. Go home. I love you.’ What the f–k is that? That came from the president of the United States."