2021 Storming of the United States Capitol

On January 6, 2021, thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, in a violent protest against the results of the 2020 presidential election. The demonstrators broke through police barricades and entered the Capitol building where lawmakers were officially certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the election. Members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence were evacuated from the building as the mob faced off with security and swarmed the building. Five people died during or shortly after the incident, including one police officer who died after sustaining injuries, one protester shot by police, and three others who suffered medical emergencies; many more people were injured, including over one hundred fifty police officers. Dozens of protesters were arrested at the Capitol, while more arrests followed in the days and months after the riot; according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), by January 4, 2023, over 950 people had been arrested on a variety of charges. President Trump, who had insisted without evidence that the election had been “stolen” from him, had addressed a crowd in a fiery speech before the riot and was blamed by some for inciting the insurrection. His actions resulted in his impeachment in the House of Representatives—the second time he had been impeached during his four-year tenure.

Background

Republican candidate Donald Trump entered the race for president in 2015, and immediately courted controversy with his often inflammatory rhetoric. His campaign statements on issues such as immigration galvanized opposition among Democrats, but also attracted strong support among the more right-leaning factions of the Republican Party. After a bitter and divisive campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, Trump emerged victorious, winning the Electoral College vote, but losing the popular vote by a wide margin. Trump’s victory was met with large, but mainly peaceful, protests by Clinton supporters and Democrats.

During his term in office, Trump often antagonized his opponents with contentious remarks on social media, in particular Twitter. He also claimed that the mainstream media was engaged in a conspiracy to distort his record and paint him in a negative light. This led many of his supporters to wholeheartedly agree with his assessment of the media as “fake news.”

The 2020 presidential election was unique in US history, as it took place during the global COVID-19 pandemic that had left more than 230,000 Americans dead by early November 2020. To avoid transmission of the disease, many states encouraged mail-in voting, a method criticized by Trump before the election as being open to fraud, despite evidence disputing this claim. On Election Day—November 3, 2020—Trump faced off against Democrat Joe Biden, who had been vice president under President Barack Obama. With many mail-in ballots yet to be counted and the results from several states still unknown on Election Day, Trump claimed victory and promised to take the election fight to the Supreme Court. However, when the ballots were finally all counted days later, Biden was declared the winner by a 306–232 Electoral College vote margin.

Trump refused to concede and filed more than sixty lawsuits seeking to overturn the results. None of the lawsuits was successful. He remained defiant and continued to claim that the election was “rigged,” despite providing no credible evidence that voter fraud had occurred.

Overview

According to US law, individual states must first certify their Electoral College votes and send that information to Congress for a formal certification. All fifty states and the District of Columbia certified their 2020 election results on December 11, 2020. On January 6, 2021, Congress met in a joint session at the Capitol for the official certification process. The process is normally ceremonial, but representatives and senators can issue an objection to the count if they wish. Several Republican legislators suggested they would do just that, continuing to support Trump's false narrative of widespread fraud.

On January 6, thousands of Trump supporters had come to Washington, DC, at the president’s urging to protest the election results. Just before the official count in Congress began, Trump addressed a large crowd at a rally in front of the White House. He referred to the election as being “stolen” by the radical left and the news media. He also called upon his supporters to show strength and walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and push congressional Republicans to “take back our country.” Although he also told his supporters to march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically,” many members of the crowd began to leave before Trump was finished speaking. As they arrived at the Capitol, they joined a large crowd of Trump supporters that had already been protesting outside the building.

As the number of protesters outside the Capitol continued to grow, they also became increasingly agitated and confrontational with police officers tasked with guarding the building. At about 12:50 p.m., several groups of protesters forced their way through barricades outside the Capitol and clashed with officers. Within a few minutes, riot gear-clad Capitol Police were called in to hold back the protesters. By this time, the congressional session had been called to order and the process of certifying the vote had begun. As expected, objections to the vote were made, and the House and the Senate went into their separate chambers to discuss the issues.

With the crowd growing more unruly, the head of the Capitol Police called for backup from the National Guard at about 1:48 p.m. Within minutes, the rioters had torn down fencing outside the northwest side of the building and by 2:00 p.m., had forced police back to the final barricades on both the east and west sides of the Capitol. Ten minutes later, the mob pushed through the last police lines and entered the Capitol.

With police lines breached, rioters poured into the building. Some broke windows to enter while others climbed scaffolding to gain access to upper floor balconies. Both the House and the Senate went into recess as armed Capitol Police surrounded the Senate chamber and House aides piled up furniture in front of the doors to block access from outside. Vice President Mike Pence, who was overseeing the proceedings as the traditional president of the Senate, was quickly evacuated. Later reports indicated that some rioters shouted “hang Mike Pence” as they stormed into the Capitol. Pence had announced that he would respect the results of the election and not use his position to overturn it, which Trump had urged him to do. Some lawmakers could not be immediately evacuated from the building and had to hide in their offices or on their chamber floors until they could be taken to safety.

As the crowd outside continued to grow and more protesters swarmed into the Capitol, police deployed tear gas and pepper spray on the rioters. Many rioters violently confronted police, while others roamed the halls of the Capitol waving Trump flags and breaking into congressional offices. Protesters briefly occupied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, with one having his picture taken with his feet on her desk and another stealing her laptop. By 3:30 p.m., Capitol security had made progress in removing the rioters from the building. They secured the Senate floor, and by 5:30 p.m., had secured the entire Capitol. Hours after the chaos, Congress reconvened and completed the certification process, officially declaring Joe Biden as the next president. While Trump did not back away from his claims disputing the election, he decreased his defiant tone, saying that he would adhere to an orderly transfer of power.

More than one hundred Capitol Police officers were ultimately reported injured in the violent attack. Officer Brian Sicknick died the day after the insurrection, and reports initially suggested his death may have been related to being struck in the head or pepper sprayed during the riots, leading to a homicide investigation. However, a medical examiner eventually ruled that Sicknick died of stroke linked to natural causes. Several officers present at the insurrection reportedly died by suicide in the ensuing months. Meanwhile, there were casualties among the rioters as well. Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter from California, was shot and killed by police as she attempted to break down the doors to the Senate chamber. Three other Trump supporters died from medical emergencies while storming the building. More than fifty protesters were arrested immediately after the riots; arrest warrants were ultimately issued for over five hundred people in the ensuing weeks.

Attacks had happened in the Capitol several times previously. The last fatalities before 2021 occurred in 1998 when two Capitol Police officers were killed by a gunman. However, the last time the Capitol was attacked by such a large number of people was during the War of 1812, when the British invaded Washington and set fire to the building.

In the wake of the incident, congressional Democrats and some Republicans expressed anger at President Trump’s actions in the days and hours leading to the riots. Many accused him of inciting the protesters and urging them to attack Congress as a way of halting Biden’s certification as president. On January 13, 2021, Trump was impeached in the House of Representatives on a charge of incitement of insurrection. The vote was 323 in favor of impeachment to 197 against, with ten Republicans joining the Democratic majority in calling for impeachment. Trump had previously been impeached in the House in December 2019 on charges of obstruction and abuse of power but was later acquitted in a Senate trial. His second impeachment made him the first US president in history to be impeached twice.

Aftermath and Investigation

Trump's second impeachment trial began on February 9, 2021, after Republicans pushed to wait until he had left office. The prosecutors drew much media attention for showing graphic footage of the Capitol attack and highlighting Trump's own words. Although a 57–43 majority found Trump guilty, with seven Republicans joining all Democrats, the vote did not reach the two-thirds margin necessary to convict. Many Republicans argued they had to acquit because Trump was no longer in office, though some openly denounced Trump and his actions around the insurrection.

Soon after the January 6 insurrection, legislators proposed investigations into the incident, but these efforts faced partisan challenges. A proposed bipartisan national commission to examine the events was approved by the House on May 19, 2021, but blocked by Senate Republicans in a vote later that month. On June 30, the Democrat-controlled House voted to form a select committee to investigate the attack, with Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming the only Republicans to split from their party and approve the creation of the commission. Many Republicans continued to object to the inquiry as it got under way, especially after Democrats blocked Trump allies from sitting on the nine-person panel, which consisted of seven Democrats in addition to Kinzinger and Cheney. The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol held its first meeting on July 27, 2021, when Capitol Police officers offered initial testimony.

In subsequent months, the committee continued to collect evidence, gather testimony, and conduct interviews to gain a better understanding of the events leading up to the insurrection, as well as the insurrection itself. In August 2021, the committee issued subpoenas to fifteen social media companies, including Facebook, Tik Tok, and Twitter, for records related to the events of January 6. They also issued subpoenas for Executive Branch records from various agencies and departments, including White House visitor logs from the National Archives, and to many individuals connected to the Trump administration. While the committee was not authorized to pursue criminal charges, it intended to give evidence of criminal wrongdoing to the DOJ. Many elected Republicans still loyal to Trump continued to oppose efforts to investigate the insurrection, and in February 2022, the Republican National Committee (RNC) voted to censure Kinzinger and Cheney for their involvement in the committee, which the RNC called a "persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse." The RNC's description of the storming of the Capitol as "legitimate political discourse" drew outrage from Democrats, who argued that such a description amounted to an implicit endorsement of the violence on January 6.

Meanwhile, federal and local law enforcement agencies worked to identify and arrest individuals involved in storming the Capitol. By January 4, 2023, more than 950 people had been arrested; they faced charges ranging from obstruction and disorderly conduct to weapons violations and assaulting law enforcement officers. Some high-profile individuals also faced criminal charges for their failure to comply with the House committee investigation. In November 2021, Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump ally, was indicted for contempt of Congress after refusing to appear before a House committee panel. The following month, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was also held in contempt of Congress by the House committee, which recommended that the Department of Justice (DOJ) pursue criminal charges against him. While it was announced in June 2022 that the DOJ had decided against indicting Meadows as well as former advisor Dan Scavino, the DOJ also released news of its indictment of Peter Navarro, who had served as a trade advisor during Trump's administration, on two contempt of Congress counts for his refusal to appear before the committee as well as to provide requested documents. Bannon, meanwhile, was ultimately found guilty in July.

June 2022 also saw the beginning of a series of public, televised hearings held by the committee to present its gathered findings pertaining to the insurrection. With a variety of details provided by a range of witness testimonies, by the end of the month, information shared during the sixth hearing was widely viewed as some of the most important to the investigation up to that point. Appearing before the committee, Meadows's former aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified that, in addition to Trump having prior knowledge of the weapons carried by some individuals present at the rally, she had been privy to discussions of Trump's frustration around being prohibited from carrying out a planned and well-known trip of his own to the Capitol. In general, the hearings so far had covered topics such as the involvement of the Proud Boys and the disinformation as well as pressure Trump allegedly employed toward having the election declared illegitimate.

By November 2022, the DOJ had announced that a special counsel had been named to, in part, provide oversight for the department's investigation into interference in the transfer of presidential power and the January 6 attack. That same month saw the conclusion of another high-profile court case related to the January 6 attack, with Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes convicted of seditious conspiracy. The House committee, which symbolically voted for Trump's referral to the DOJ on a minimum of four criminal charges, released its final report in December. Among its recommendations, the lengthy report included advisement related to prohibiting Trump from holding any federal office in the future and promotion of a full passage of the Electoral Count Act. The authors cited Trump as the "central cause" of the January 6 incident. Responding to the report's release on social media, Trump continued to allege that the election had been fraudulent while condemning the report as partisan.

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