Here is the result in plain text:
Four years to the day after a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters violently besieged the US Capitol, Congress formally certified the incoming president’s re-election in a special session. Vice-President Kamala Harris, who Trump defeated in the 2024 election, presided over the event as required by the US Constitution. But the shadow of January 6, 2021 lingered over the proceedings, despite Trump and his allies’ campaign to recast the attack as a “day of love.”
Trump celebrated the moment on Truth Social, writing: “Congress certifies our great election victory today – a big moment in history.” The day was extraordinary in its normalcy, given the chaos of four years before. Harris stood at the front of the US House chamber with a somber expression as lawmakers read out each state’s election results before formally declaring their authenticity.
Although the results declared Trump the victor, Harris received a standing ovation from the Democratic side of the chamber when she read out her own electoral vote tally. Vice-president-elect JD Vance was in attendance. Seated directly next to him was Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, one of the few remaining Republican senators who voted to convict Trump in an impeachment trial stemming from the riot – that vote ultimately failed and Trump was acquitted.
In the immediate wake of the attack, which millions of Americans watched unfold on television and social media, there was little debate over who deserved blame. The US House of Representatives impeached Trump on charges he incited the riot, but the US Senate did not achieve the two-thirds vote required to convict him. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, explicitly blamed Trump, saying rioters “did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth – because he was angry he’d lost an election”.
Trump himself faced federal charges for allegations that he attempted to subvert the 2020 election, to which he pleaded not guilty. But the Department of Justice (DoJ) was forced to drop the case once he was elected last year, due to protocols that prevented the prosecution of a sitting president.
As Trump sought a return to power, he and his allies have worked to dramatically change the narrative around the riot and its cause. Trump said there was “nothing done wrong at all,” at an October 2024 presidential campaign forum. He has called the people convicted by the DoJ “hostages” and “political prisoners.” And his new vice-president, JD Vance, refused to acknowledge in a presidential debate that Trump lost the 2020 election.
Americans now have starkly divided perspectives on the day. A January 2024 Washington Post/University of Maryland poll suggested that a quarter of Americans believed a conspiracy theory that the FBI instigated the attack. While a majority of Americans believed January 6, 2021 was an attack on democracy, only 18% of Republicans thought so, the poll indicated.
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