AFPFour years to the day after a mob of Donald Trump supporters furiously besieged the US Capitol, Congress will convene to formally certify his re-election.
With Trump's victory assured, the biggest obstacle currently facing lawmakers this year is a major snowstorm. Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Trump defeated in the 2024 election, will chair the event, as required by the US constitution.
But the shadow of January 6, 2021. remained above Monday's proceedings, despite a campaign by Trump and his allies to reframe the attack as a “day of love.”
Security has been beefed up in Washington, and current President Joe Biden has vowed there will be no repeat of the violence four years ago that resulted in several deaths and millions of dollars in damage.
The certification, scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday, is usually a symbol of America's commitment to a peaceful transfer of power despite partisan differences.
But this time it has become emblematic of Trump's extraordinary political comeback and his complete takeover of the Republican Party.
Trump celebrated the moment on Truth Social, writing: “Congress certifies our big election victory today – big moment in history.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson vowed to press ahead with the certification despite the inclement weather, telling Fox News: “Whether we're in a blizzard or not, we're going to be in this room to make sure it gets done.”
Harris, meanwhile, vowed to “do my constitutional duty as vice president to certify the results of the 2024 election.”
“This duty is a sacred duty — one that I will uphold, driven by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution and unwavering faith in the American people,” she said in a video statement.
Normally, there would be no need for a vice president to declare such an intention. The US Constitution requires the January 6 presidential election to be certified and the vice president to oversee the vote.
But the last time the U.S. Congress met to certify the election of a U.S. president, the vote was delayed for several hours because rioters, animated by the false belief that the 2020 election were stolen by Trump, smashed windows, forced their way through lines of police, ransacked the floor of the US House of Representatives and ransacked then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office.
In a speech in Washington the same day, before the violence erupted, Trump told the crowd to “fight like hell” but also asked them to “peacefully” make their voices heard.
Lawmakers, including Republicans, were forced to cower in the basement, and Capitol staff hid wherever they could find shelter. Trump's vice president at the time, Mike Pence, was taken into hiding as rioters set up a gallows on the Capitol grounds and called for his hanging because he refused to certify the results inaccurately in Trump's favor.
In the aftermath, Capitol Hill staff worked furiously to clean up broken windows, discarded hallways and even human waste, an experience described as “humbling.” Congressional staffers spent the next few months reeling from the trauma of the attack.
The riot caused nearly $3 million (£2.4 million) in damage, injured more than 100 police officers and shocked America's political system.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, which millions of Americans watched on television and social media, there was little debate about who deserved to be blamed.
The US House of Representatives impeached Trump on charges that he incited the riot, but the US Senate failed to muster the necessary two-thirds vote to convict him. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, specifically blamed Trump, saying the insurgents “did this because they were fed wild lies by the most powerful man on Earth — because he was angry that he lost an election.”
Trump himself has faced federal indictments on charges he tried to undermine the 2020 election, to which he has pleaded not guilty. But the Department of Justice (DoJ) was forced to drop the case after he was elected because of protocols that prevented prosecution of a sitting president.
As Trump sought a return to power, he and his allies worked to drastically change the narrative surrounding the riot and its cause.
Trump said “nothing wrong was done” at a forum on the October 2024 presidential campaign.
He called the people convicted by the Justice Department “hostages” and “political prisoners.” And his new vice president, JD Vance, refused to admit in a presidential debate that Trump had lost the 2020 election.
Americans now have sharply divided views on the day. January 2024 Washington Post/University of Maryland survey. shows that a quarter of Americans believe in the conspiracy theory that the FBI instigated the attack. While the majority of Americans believe that January 6, 2021 is an attack on democracy, only 18 percent of Republicans think so, the survey found.
ReutersTrump carried all seven swing states in the Nov. 5 presidential election, giving him a landslide victory in the Electoral College, the mechanism that decides who takes over the presidency.
It will be Harris' job Monday to read the number of Electoral College votes each candidate won.
Trump's second term will begin after his inauguration on January 20. For the first time since 2017. the president's party will also enjoy majorities in both houses of Congress, albeit slim ones.
It represents a stunning political comeback after his 2020 election defeat. and a criminal conviction in 2024. – a first for a current or former US president.
Trump's promises since returning to office include pardoning people convicted of crimes related to the attack. He says many of them are “wrongfully imprisoned”, although he admits “a few of them are probably out of control”.
Conversely, Biden urged Americans to never forget what happened.
“We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it,” Biden wrote in the Washington Post over the weekend.
For Trump's Republican Party, new Senate Majority Leader John Thune signaled a willingness to move on, telling the BBC's US partner CBS News: “You can't look in the rear-view mirror.”
