As Congress meets during a winter storm to certify the election of President-elect Donald Trump, the legacy of January 6 looms over the proceedings with an unusual fact: The candidate who tried to overturn the previous election has won this time and is legitimately returning to power.
Lawmakers will meet at noon on Monday under the maximum possible level of national security. Layers of tall black fencing surround the US Capitol complex in a stark reminder of what happened four years ago, when a defeated Trump sent his mob to “fight like hell” in what became the most horrific attack on the seat of American democracy in 200 years. .
This time, violence, protests, or even procedural objections in Congress are not expected. Republicans at the highest levels of power who challenged the 2020 election results when Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden have no concerns this year after he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris.
However, Democrats who are frustrated with Trump’s victory by 312 votes to 226 in the Electoral College nevertheless accept the choice of American voters. Even the snowstorm hitting the area was not expected to interfere with January 6, the day set by law to certify the vote.
“Whether we’re in a blizzard or not, we’re going to be in that room to make sure that happens,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican who helped lead Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, said Sunday on Fox News. .
The return to the American tradition of launching a peaceful transfer of presidential power comes with an asterisk as Trump prepares to take office in two weeks with a renewed sense of authority. He denies that he lost four years ago, is considering staying outside the Constitution’s two-term limit in the White House, and is promising to pardon some of the more than 1,250 people who have pleaded guilty or been convicted to crimes related to the Capitol siege.
What’s not clear is whether January 6, 2021, is the anomalous date, the year Americans violently attacked their government, or whether the expected calm this year has turned strange. The United States is struggling to adapt to its political and cultural differences at a time when democracy around the world is under threat. Trump describes January 6, 2021, as “Love Day.”
“We should not succumb to complacency,” said Ian Basin, executive director of the nonprofit Save Democracy.
He and others have warned that it is historically unprecedented for American voters to do what they did in November, re-elect Trump after he publicly refused to step down the previous time. The return to power of a bold leader who has demonstrated his unwillingness to relinquish power “is a dangerous and unprecedented step that a free country must take voluntarily,” Bhasin said.
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Biden, who was speaking on Sunday at events at the White House, described January 6, 2021, as “one of the most difficult days in American history.”
“We have to return to the normal, basic transfer of power,” the president said. Biden said that what Trump did last time “was a real threat to democracy.” “I hope we’re past that now.”
Yet American democracy has proven its resilience, and Congress, the branch of government closest to the people, will meet to affirm Americans’ choice.
With pomp and tradition, the day is expected to unfold as it has countless times before, with the arrival of ceremonial mahogany boxes filled with election certificates from the states — boxes that staffers were frantically grabbing and protecting when Trump’s mob stormed the building the last time. .
Senators will walk through the Capitol — which four years ago was filled with roving rioters, some defecating and calling out to leaders menacingly, others engaging in fistfights with police — to the House of Representatives to begin certifying the vote.
Harris will preside over the vote count, as is the case for a vice president, and certify her defeat herself — as Democrat Al Gore did in 2001 and Republican Richard Nixon in 1961.
She will stand on the podium where then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was abruptly moved to safety the last time as the mob approached and lawmakers stumbled to put on gas masks and flee, and gunshots rang out as police killed Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter who was trying to climb through a glass door. Broken towards the room.
There are new procedural rules in place in the wake of what happened four years ago, when Republicans echoed Trump’s lie that the election was rigged and challenged the results certified by their states.
Under changes to the vote counting law, a fifth of lawmakers, instead of just one in each chamber, are now required to raise any objections to the election results. With security as tight as it is for the Super Bowl or the Olympics, law enforcement is on high alert in anticipation of intruders. No tourists will be allowed.
But none of that is expected to be necessary.
Republicans, who met with Trump behind closed doors at the White House before January 6, 2021 to formulate a complex plan to challenge his electoral defeat, accepted his victory this time.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who led the challenge in the House in 2021, said people at the time were very surprised by the election result and there were “a lot of pretensions and allegations.”
This time he said: “I think the victory was very decisive… He stifled most of it.”
Democrats, who have raised token objections in the past, including during the disputed 2000 election that Al Gore lost to George W. Bush and which the Supreme Court ultimately decided, have no intention of objecting. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said the Democratic Party is not “infested” with election denial.
“There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle,” Jeffries said on the first day of the new Congress, to applause from Democrats in the chamber.
“You see, one has to love America when it wins and when it loses. That’s the patriotic thing to do,” Jeffries said.
Last time, far-right militias helped lead a mob to storm the Capitol in a scene resembling a war zone. Officers described being crushed, pepper sprayed, hit with Trump flag poles, and “slipping in other people’s blood.”
Leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to long prison terms. Many others faced prison, probation, home detention or other penalties.
Those Republicans who engineered the legal challenges to Trump’s defeat are still standing by their actions, which were celebrated by Trump’s circles, despite the heavy costs to their personal and professional livelihoods.
Several of them, including disbarred lawyer Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and the indicted but pardoned Michael Flynn, met over the weekend at Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago to screen a film about the 2020 election.
Trump was impeached by the House for incitement of insurrection that day but acquitted by the Senate. At the time, Republican Party leader Mitch McConnell blamed Trump for the siege, but said his guilt was up to the courts to decide.
Federal prosecutors later issued a four-count indictment against Trump for working to overturn the election, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, but special counsel Jack Smith was forced to scale back the case once the Supreme Court ruled that the president had broad immunity. For actions taken in office.
Smith withdrew the case last month after Trump won re-election, adhering to Justice Department guidelines that say sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.
In one of his earlier acts, Biden awarded the Presidential Citizen’s Medal to Rep. Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Missouri, and former Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who was chairman and vice chairman of the congressional committee that conducted the Jan. 6, 2021, investigation.
Trump said those who worked on the January 6 committee should be jailed.
Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein and Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.
