WASHINGTON — As Congress convenes amid a winter storm to certify President-elect Donald Trump ‘s election, the legacy of Jan. 6 hangs over the proceedings with an extraordinary fact: The candidate who tried to overturn the previous election won this time, and is legitimately returning to power.
Lawmakers will gather noontime Monday under the tightest national security level possible. Layers of tall black fencing flank the U.S. 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 gruesome attack on the seat of American democracy in 200 years.
No violence, protests or even procedural objections in Congress are expected this time. Republicans from the highest levels of power who challenged the 2020 election results when Trump lost to President Joe Biden have no qualms this year after he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris.
And Democrats frustrated by Trump’s 312-226 Electoral College victory nevertheless accept the choice of the American voters. Even the threat of a massive snowstorm barreling down on the region wasn’t expected to interfere with Jan. 6, the day set by law to certify the vote.
“Whether we’re in a blizzard or not, we are going to be in that chamber making sure this is done,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican who helped lead Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said Sunday on Fox News.
The day’s return to a U.S. tradition that launches the peaceful transfer of presidential power comes with an asterisk as Trump prepares to take office in two weeks with a revived sense of authority. He denies that he lost four years ago, muses about staying beyond the Constitution’s two-term White House limit and promises to pardon some of the more than 1,250 people who have pleaded guilty or were convicted of crimes for the Capitol siege.
What’s unclear is if Jan. 6, 2021 was the anomaly, the year Americans violently attacked their own government, or if this year’s expected calm becomes the outlier. The U.S. is struggling to cope with its political and cultural differences at a time when democracy worldwide is threatened. Trump calls Jan. 6, 2021 a “day of love.”
“We should not be lulled into complacency,” said Ian Bassin, executive director of the cross-ideological nonprofit Protect Democracy.
He and others have warned that it is historically unprecedented for U.S. voters to do what they did in November, reelecting Trump after he publicly refused to step aside last time. Returning to power an emboldened leader who has demonstrated his unwillingness to give it up “is an unprecedentedly dangerous move for a free country to voluntarily take,” Bassin said.
Biden, speaking Sunday at events at the White House, called Jan. 6, 2021 “one of the toughest days in American history.”
“We’ve got to get back to the basic, normal transfer of power,” Biden said. What Trump did last time, Biden said, “was a genuine threat to democracy. I’m hopeful we’re beyond that now.”
Still, American democracy has proven to be resilient, and Congress, the branch of government closest to the people, will come together to affirm the choice of Americans.
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 the electoral certificates from the states — boxes that staff were frantically grabbing and protecting as Trump’s mob stormed the building last time.
Senators will walk across the Capitol — which four years ago had filled with roaming rioters, some defecating and menacingly calling out for leaders, others engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police — to the House to begin certifying the vote.
Harris will preside over the counting, as is the requirement for the vice president, and certify her own defeat — much the way Democrat Al Gore did in 2001 and Republican Richard Nixon in 1961.
She will stand at the dais where then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi was abruptly rushed to safety last time as the mob closed in and lawmakers fumbled to put on gas masks and flee, and shots rang out as police killed Ashli Babbitt, a Trump supporter trying to climb through a broken glass door toward the chamber.
There are new procedural rules in place in the aftermath of what happened four years ago, when Republicans parroting Trump’s lie that the election was fraudulent challenged the results their own states had certified.
Under changes to the Electoral Count Act, it now requires one-fifth of lawmakers, instead of just one in each chamber, to raise any objections to election results. With security as tight as it is for the Super Bowl or the Olympics, law enforcement is on high alert for 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 Jan. 6, 2021 to craft a complex plan to challenge his election defeat, have accepted his win this time.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., who led the House floor challenge in 2021, said people at the time were so astonished by the election’s outcome and there were “lots of claims and allegations.”
This time, he said, “I think the win was so decisive…. It stifled most of that.”
Democrats, who have raised symbolic objections in the past, including during the disputed 2000 election that Gore lost to George W. Bush and ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, have no intention of objecting. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said the Democratic Party is not “infested” with election denialism.
“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 should love America when you win and when you lose. That’s the patriotic thing to do,” Jeffries said.
Last time, far-right militias helped lead the mob to break into the Capitol in a war-zone-like scene. Officers have described being crushed and pepper-sprayed and beaten with Trump flag poles, “ slipping in other people’s blood.”
Leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have been convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Many others faced prison, probation, home confinement or other penalties.
Those Republicans who engineered the legal challenges to Trump’s defeat still stand by their actions, celebrated in Trump circles, despite the grave costs to their personal and professional livelihoods.
Several including disbarred lawyer Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, and indicted-but-pardoned Michael Flynn met over the weekend at Trump’s private club Mar-a-Lago for a film screening about the 2020 election.
Trump was impeached by the House on the charge of inciting an insurrection that day, but acquitted by the Senate. At the time, GOP leader Mitch McConnell blamed Trump for the siege but said his culpability was for the courts to decide.
Federal prosecutors subsequently issued a four-count indictment of Trump for working to overturn the election, including for conspiracy to defraud the United States, but special counsel Jack Smith was forced to pare back the case once the Supreme Court ruled that a president has broad immunity for actions taken in office.
Smith last month withdrew the case after Trump won reelection, adhering to Justice Department guidelines that sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.
Biden, in one of his outgoing acts, awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., who had been the chair and vice chair of the congressional committee that conducted an investigation into Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump has said those who worked on the Jan. 6 committee should be locked up.
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Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein and Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.
