Former US state lawmaker who attended Capitol riots maintains that Jan. 6 event was ‘a protest’

WASHINGTON, US - JANUARY 04: After losing the 2020 election, former US President Donald Trump exhorted thousands of his supporters to march on the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021. Refusing to concede defeat, Trump addressed a sprawling crowd at the National Mall. "We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen. You don't concede when there's theft involved,” he told his followers, fueling their anger with claims of election fraud. Over 2,000 Trump supporters -- some of them armed and who believed that the election was stolen by Democrats -- stormed the Capitol, entering the Senate chamber. Derrick Evans, then a state lawmaker in West Virginia, was among those who responded to Trump’s call to come to Washington for a rally. He arrived in the capital by bus, entered the Capitol building wearing a helmet, and his life totally changed. "I saw a tweet from President Trump asking people to show up, so I decided to go, to show up that day, as there'd be a lot of people peacefully protesting. So I showed up to go do the same thing and rode a bus from West Virginia to Washington, D.C.," Evans told Anadolu Agency in a Zoom interview ahead of the second anniversary of the incident. Asked why he took part, Evans stressed that it "was not a riot but a protest." "I showed up there to peacefully exercise my natural God-given rights of free speech to protest a stolen election here in the United States of America." (Footage by Lokman Vural Elibol /Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)