The protesters reportedly were responding to McConnell’s refusal thus far to allow the Republican-led Senate to consider bills passed by the Democratic-led House that seek to strengthen background checks for gun sales.

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The protest followed the mass shootings over the weekend in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, which left 31 people dead. The senator was reportedly home recovering from a fractured shoulder at the time of the protest.

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Facebook video captured a moment where one of the protesters urged another to stab a voodoo doll representing McConnell in the heart.

In tweets Tuesday, McConnell’s campaign characterized the protesters as “an angry left-wing mob” of a Democrat rival. In another tweet, the campaign referenced an episode over the weekend in which several McConnell supporters wearing “Team Mitch” T-shirts were photographed around a cardboard cutout of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), with some groping it and kissing it.

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In a tweet Monday directed at McConnell, Ocasio-Cortez asked whether the Senate leader was “paying for young men to practice groping & choking members of Congress w/ your payroll.”

The McConnell campaign’s tweets Tuesday suggested that he faced a far greater danger: “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and liberal Twitter personalities are trying to dox some underage kids for taking a photo with a cutout at the Fancy Farm political picnic and are cheering on thousands of accounts calling for Senator McConnell to ‘break his neck.’ ”

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— Julie K. Brown and John Wagner

FLORIDA

State probe ordered into Epstein case

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has ordered a state criminal probe into the actions of the Palm Beach sheriff and the former Palm Beach state attorney’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein underage sex trafficking case.

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DeSantis’s move comes as Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw has come under increasing scrutiny for his decision in 2008 to give Epstein, a politically connected multimillionaire, unusually lenient work release privileges even though he was a convicted sex offender who had been accused of molesting dozens of underage girls.

Epstein, 66, is now under indictment in New York, charged with sex trafficking minors — both in Palm Beach and in Manhattan, where Epstein owns sprawling homes. Epstein was investigated in Palm Beach, starting in 2006, but then-State Attorney Barry Krischer wanted to charge him with a misdemeanor.

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The case was transferred to the FBI, which discovered even more alleged victims, and federal investigators gathered enough corroborating evidence to fill a 53-page federal indictment. The indictment, however, was inexplicably shelved under then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, who signed off on an agreement that allowed Epstein to plead guilty to lesser charges in state court in Palm Beach. As part of the deal, Epstein was jailed in a private wing of the Palm Beach County stockade. But within a few months, he was allowed to have his own driver pick him up and take him to an office he had set up in West Palm Beach.

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DeSantis, in announcing the probe Tuesday, said he was doing so at the behest of Bradshaw.

— Miami Herald

Brown's father seeks new probe: The father of Michael Brown is seeking a new investigation of the white Ferguson, Mo., police officer who fatally shot the black and unarmed teenager nearly five years ago. Michael Brown Sr. says that on Friday, the anniversary of his son's death, he will speak at a news conference in Clayton and urge St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell to reopen the case.

Decision on Meek Mill retrial postponed: A decision on whether Meek Mill will be retried in a 2007 drug and gun case was delayed until Aug. 27 after his lawyer asked a judge in Philadelphia on Tuesday for more time. The rapper, 32, whose real name is Robert Williams, has been on probation most of his adult life over the teenage arrest.