Five years ago outside the White House, outgoing President Donald Trump told a crowd of his supporters to head to the Capitol — “and I’ll be there with you” — to protest Congress’ confirmation of Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
Soon, the world watched the seat of American power descend into chaos, with democracy hanging in the balance.
On the fifth anniversary of Jan. 6, 2021, there is no official event to commemorate what happened that day, when the mob forced its way up Pennsylvania Avenue, clashed with police at Capitol barricades and stormed inside, while lawmakers fled. Political parties refuse to agree to a common history of events broadcast around the world. The official plaque honoring the police who defended the Capitol was never hung.
Instead, the day showcased the divisions that continue to define Washington and the country, in split-screen events.
Trump, during a lengthy morning speech to House Republicans meeting far from the Capitol in the renamed Kennedy Center that now bears his name, placed the blame for Jan. 6 on the rioters themselves.
The president said he only intended for his supporters to go “peacefully and patriotically” to confront Congress while certifying Biden’s victory. He blamed the media for focusing on other parts of his speech that day.
Meanwhile, Democrats held their morning meeting at the Capitol, where they reconvened members of the House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 attack for a panel discussion. They said that remembering the date of that day is important, in order to prevent what Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, warned of, the Republican Party’s “Orwellian forgetting project.”
The former leader of the Proud Boys armed group, Enrique Tarrio, called on people to participate in a midday march, retracing the steps of rioters from the White House to the Capitol to honor Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt and others who died in the Jan. 6 siege and its aftermath. About 100 people gathered, including Babette’s mother.
Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for orchestrating the Jan. 6 attack, and is among more than 1,500 defendants whose charges were dropped when Trump issued a sweeping pardon upon his return to the White House last year.
Echoes 5 years ago
This historic anniversary carried echoes of the disputes that broke out on that day.
But it is unfolding while attention is focused elsewhere – especially after the US military’s stunning arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and Trump’s plans to seize control of the country and prop up its massive oil industry – a stunning new era of American expansionism.
“These people in the administration want to lecture the world about democracy when they undermine the rule of law at home, as we will all be forcefully reminded,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said on the eve of the anniversary.
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office, in response to requests for comment on the delay in hanging the police honor plaque in the Capitol building, as required by law, said in a statement that the law is “unenforceable,” and the proposed alternatives “are also inconsistent with the statute.”
Democrats are reviving an old commission, and Republicans are leading a new one
At the morning hearing at the Capitol, lawmakers heard from a host of witnesses and others, including former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Winston Bingone, who said he loved his job and had it not been for Jan. 6, he would still be on the force today, as well as Pamela Hemphill, a rioter who rejected Trump’s pardon, silenced the room as she blamed the president for the violence and apologized to the officer, choking back tears.
“I can’t allow them to be misidentified and lied to,” Hemphill said of law enforcement.
“Until I can see that painting over there,” Hemphill said, “she’s not going to be done with it.”
Among those who testified was former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who, along with former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, was on the panel that investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s win. Cheney, who lost her re-election bid to a Trump-backed challenger, did not attend. Honorary Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined the audience.
Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, appointed by House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana to lead a new panel to investigate other theories about what happened on Jan. 6, dismissed Tuesday’s hearing as a “partisan exercise” aimed at hurting Trump and his allies.
Many Republicans reject the narrative that Trump provoked the Jan. 6 attack, and that Johnson, before becoming House speaker, led challenges to the 2020 election. He was among about 130 GOP lawmakers who voted that day to reject the presidential results in some states.
Instead, they focused on security lapses at the Capitol — from the time it took the National Guard to arrive at the scene to the failure of police sniffer dog units to detect the pipe bombs found that day outside Republican and Democratic party headquarters. Authorities say the FBI has arrested a Virginia man suspected of placing the pipe bombs, and he told investigators last month he believed someone should speak up on behalf of those who believe the 2020 election was stolen.
“The Capitol Complex is no safer today than it was on January 6,” Loudermilk said in a social media post. “My select subcommittee remains committed to transparency, accountability, and ensuring that the security failures that occurred on January 6 and the partisan investigation that followed do not happen again.”
Aftermath of January 6
Five people died in the Capitol siege and its aftermath, including Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police as he tried to climb through a door window near the House chamber, and Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick later died after fighting the mob. Several law enforcement officials later died, some by suicide.
The Justice Department charged Trump with four counts of conspiracy to defraud voters with his claims of election fraud in the lead-up to the January 6 attack.
Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers last month that the riot at the Capitol “doesn’t happen” without Trump. He ended up dropping the case once Trump was re-elected president, adhering to the department’s guidelines against prosecuting a sitting president.
Trump, who never arrived at the Capitol that day while holed up in the White House, was impeached by the House on charges of incitement of insurrection. The Senate acquitted him after senior GOP senators said they believed it was better to leave the matter to the courts.
Before the 2024 elections, the Supreme Court ruled that former presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution.
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