Harris to certify Trump’s victory in the US election, four years after the Capitol riots

Four years to the day after mobs of Donald Trump’s supporters violently laid siege to the US Capitol, Congress is meeting 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, who was defeated by Trump in the 2024 election, will preside over the event as required by the US Constitution.

But the shadow of January 6, 2021 still looms over Monday’s proceedings, despite a campaign by Trump and his allies to reframe the attack as a “Day of Love.”

Tight security measures are spread in Washington, D.C., and current President Joe Biden has pledged not to repeat the violence that occurred four years ago, which led to the deaths of many people and millions of dollars in damage.

The ratification process, scheduled for 1:00 p.m. on Monday, is usually a symbol of America’s commitment to a peaceful transition of power despite partisan differences.

But this time, it became a symbol of Trump’s extraordinary political comeback and his complete control of the Republican Party.

Trump celebrated the moment on Truth Social, writing: “Congress bears witness to our great electoral victory today – a huge moment in history.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson pledged to press ahead with the ratification despite the weather, telling Fox News: “Whether we’re in a blizzard or not, we’re going to be in that room to make sure it gets done.”

Meanwhile, Harris pledged to “perform my constitutional duty as Vice President to certify the results of the 2024 election.”

“This duty is a sacred obligation, and I will uphold it guided 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 little need for the Vice President to announce such an intention. The US Constitution requires that the presidential elections be certified on January 6, and that the Vice President supervise the vote.

But the last time the US Congress met to certify the election of a US president, the vote was delayed by several hours because rioters, motivated by a mistaken belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, smashed windows and forced their way through lines of cars. Police officers stormed the US House of Representatives hall and ransacked the office of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In a speech in Washington, D.C., that day, before the violence broke out, Trump told the crowd to “fight like hell” but also asked them to make their voices heard “peacefully.”

Lawmakers, including Republicans, were forced to hide 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 when rioters erected a gallows on the Capitol grounds and called for his execution because he refused to inaccurately certify the results for Trump.

In the aftermath, custodial workers on Capitol Hill worked hard to clean up smashed windows, smashed hallways, and even human waste, an experience one described as “humiliating.” Congressional staff spent the next few months reckoning with the shock of the attack.

The riots caused an estimated $3 million (£2.4 million) in damage, injured more than 100 police officers, and shocked the American political system.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, which was watched by millions of Americans on television and social media, there was little debate about who deserved blame.

The US House of Representatives charged Trump with inciting the riots, but the US Senate did not obtain the two-thirds majority required to convict him. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, put the blame squarely on Trump, saying the rioters “did it because they were fed wild lies by the most powerful man on the face of the Earth — because he was angry that he lost the election.”

Trump himself faced federal charges for allegedly trying to subvert the 2020 election, to which he has pleaded not guilty. But the Justice Department had to drop the case once he was elected, due to protocols that prevented a sitting president from being tried.

As Trump sought to return to power, he and his allies worked to dramatically change the narrative about the riots and their cause.

Trump said during an October 2024 presidential campaign forum that “nothing at all went wrong.”

He described the people convicted by the Ministry of Justice as “hostages” and “political prisoners.” His new vice president, J.D. Vance, refused to acknowledge in a presidential debate that Trump lost the 2020 election.

Americans now have starkly divided views on this day. A January 2024 poll by The Washington Post and the University of Maryland indicated that a quarter of Americans believed a conspiracy theory that the FBI instigated the attack. The poll indicated that while the majority of Americans believe that January 6, 2021 was an attack on democracy, only 18% of Republicans believe so.

Trump captured all seven of the nation’s swing states during the November 5 presidential election, giving him a resounding victory in the Electoral College, the mechanism that decides who will assume the presidency.

Harris’ task on Monday will be to read the number of electoral votes won by each candidate.

Trump’s second term will begin after his inauguration on January 20. For the first time since 2017, the president’s party will also have a majority in both chambers of Congress, albeit a slim one.

It represents a stunning political comeback from his electoral defeat in 2020 and his criminal conviction in 2024 — the first for a current or former U.S. president.

Trump’s pledges after returning to office include pardoning people convicted of crimes related to the attack. He says many of them are “unjustly imprisoned,” although he acknowledges that “some of them may have gotten out of control.”

Conversely, Biden called on Americans to never forget what happened.

“We must remember the wisdom of the old adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it,” Biden wrote in The Washington Post over the weekend.

As for Trump’s Republican Party, new Senate Majority Leader John Thune has signaled his desire to move forward, telling CBS News, the BBC’s US partner: “You can’t look in the rearview mirror.”