Harris confirms Trump’s victory in the US election, four years after the violence in the Capitol

Four years to the day after a mob of Donald Trump supporters violently besieged the US Capitol, Congress officially confirmed the incoming president’s re-election in a special session.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who was defeated by Trump in the 2024 election, presided over the event as required by the US Constitution.

But the specter of January 6, 2021 lingered over Monday’s proceedings, despite a campaign by Trump and his allies to dismiss the attack as a “day of love.”

Security was tight in Washington DC, and the current President Joe Biden vowed that there would be no repeat of the violence four years ago.

This certification, which began as planned and without incident at 13:00 on Monday, is generally a sign of America’s commitment to a peaceful transfer of power despite the parties’ disagreements.

But this time, it was a sign of Trump’s dramatic return to politics and his complete takeover of the Republican Party.

Trump celebrated the moment on Truth Social, writing: “Congress confirms our victory in the general election today – a great moment in history.”

This day was unusual, given the turmoil of the past four years. Harris stood in front of the US House in a somber voice as lawmakers read each state’s election results before officially announcing their results.

Although the results declared Trump the winner, Harris received a standing ovation from the Democratic Party when he read his electoral votes.

Vice president-elect JD Vance was in attendance. Sitting next to him was Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, one of the few remaining Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in the impeachment trial — that vote ultimately failed and Trump was acquitted.

Earlier, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had promised to continue with the certification despite the bad weather, telling Fox News: “Whether we’re in a hurricane or not, we’re going to be in that room making sure this gets done.” .”

Harris, meanwhile, vowed to “do my constitutional duty as Vice President to ensure the results of the 2024 election.”

“This job is a sacred duty — one that I will carry out guided by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution, and unwavering faith in the American people,” he said in a video statement.

Normally there would be little need to comment on such procedures. The US Constitution requires the presidential election to be certified by January 6, and for the vice president to oversee the vote.

But the last time the US Congress convened to confirm the election of a US president, the vote was delayed for several hours because protesters, fueled by the false belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, smashed windows, beat up police lines, ransacked the US House chamber, and ransacked the Speaker’s office. then Nancy Pelosi.

In his speech in Washington DC that day, before the violence broke out, 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. The former Vice President at the time, Mike Pence, went into hiding when protesters hung a log on the grounds of the Capitol and demanded that he be hanged because he refused to incorrectly confirm the results in favor of Trump.

Afterward, Capitol Hill workers worked hard to clean up broken windows and trash hallways described as “degrading.” Congressional staff spent the next few months considering the trauma of the attack.

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

After the attack, watched by millions of Americans on television and social media, there was little debate about who was to blame.

The US House of Representatives impeached Trump on charges of sedition, but the US Senate did not reach the two-thirds vote needed to impeach him. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, criticized Trump, saying the rioters “did this because they were lied to by the most powerful man in the world – because he was angry that he lost the election”.

Trump himself has faced federal charges for allegedly trying to undermine the 2020 election, to which he has pleaded not guilty. But the Department of Justice (DoJ) was forced to drop the case once he was elected, due to regulations preventing the prosecution of a sitting president.

As Trump seeks to return to power, he and his allies have worked to dramatically change the narrative surrounding the conflict and its causes.

Trump said “nothing bad,” at a presidential campaign rally in October 2024.

He called the people condemned by the DoJ “captives” 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 very different views on this day. A January 2024 Washington Post/University of Maryland poll suggested that a quarter of Americans believe the theory that the FBI launched the attack. While most Americans believed that January 6, 2021 was an attack on democracy, only 18% of Republicans thought so, the poll showed.

Trump captured all seven of the nation’s states during the November 5 presidential vote, giving him a stunning victory in the electoral college, which is the process that determines who takes the presidency.

It was Harris’ job on Monday to preside over the proceedings as lawmakers read the number of electoral college 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 once again enjoy majorities in both chambers of Congress, albeit smaller ones.

He must make a dramatic political comeback from his election defeat in 2020, and a conviction in 2024 – a first for a current or former US president.

Trump’s promises after returning to office include pardoning people convicted of attacks. He says many of them were “arrested unjustly”, although he admitted that “a few of them, may have gotten out of control”.

On the other hand, Biden urged the American people to never forget what happened.

“We must remember the wisdom of the saying that any nation that forgets its past will repeat it,” Biden wrote in the Washington Post over the weekend.

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