The US Congress certified Donald Trump’s presidential election victory on Monday in an event heavy with symbolism, four years to the day since he incited a violent mob to disrupt a similar ceremony in an attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
The vice-president, Kamala Harris, Trump’s defeated Democratic opponent in November’s election, presided over a joint Senate and House of Representatives session to validate the result. As the certificates confirming Trump’s victory were brought into the House chamber, Harris took her place on the dais alongside the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
Four tellers – senators Deb Fischer of Nebraskaand Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and representatives Joe Morelle of New York and Bryan Steil of Wisconsin – took turns announcing each state’s electoral college results, pronouncing the certificates to be “regular in form and authentic”. JD Vance, the vice-president-elect, sat in the front row of the House chamber as his and Trump’s victory became official.
When Harris formally announced the final results, Republicans applauded Trump’s victory. Harris remained stoic throughout the session but smiled slightly as Democratic members in the chamber clapped to recognize her 226 electoral votes.
“I do believe very strongly that America’s democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it,” Harris told reporters after the joint session concluded. “Otherwise, it is very fragile, and it will not be able to withstand moments of crisis. And today, America’s democracy stood.”
As expected, Democrats did not challenge the results in any way, given that longstanding convention dictates the certification should be a mere formality in the peaceful transfer of power. However, the proceedings took place amid unprecedented security measures from US Capitol and Washington DC police, fearful of a repeat of the tumultuous events of 6 January 2021, when Trump’s supporters tried to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory amid false allegations that it had been stolen.
In an op-ed published by the Washington Post on Sunday, Biden implored Americans to remember the painful lessons learned in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
“We should be proud that our democracy withstood this assault. And we should be glad we will not see such a shameful attack again this year,” Biden wrote. “But we should not forget. We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago.”
To prevent any potential disruption on Monday, the US Capitol police took additional precautions, including the deployment of new equipment and more staff, to ensure a smooth certification process. The inclement weather in Washington, which was blanketed in snow on Monday morning due to Winter Storm Blair, may have further deterred would-be demonstrators.
“We cannot be taken by surprise again,” Tom Manger, chief of the US Capitol police, has said, referring to how police four years ago were outnumbered and overwhelmed by the rampaging mob.
In 2021, members of Congress and senators were forced to seek shelter as rioters ransacked offices and searched for leading congressional members, including the then House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
Harris’s predecessor as vice-president, Mike Pence – charged with the same constitutional role of presiding over the certification – was spirited from the building by security personnel as rioters chanted “hang Mike Pence” after he refused to comply with Trump’s demand that he decline to accept the result and instead throw the election his way.
A re-run of four years ago was highly unlikely on Monday, however. Democrats have accepted Trump’s electoral college and popular vote victory without demur. They had signalled they would not even lodge symbolic challenges to his electors, as some of them did after his 2016 victory, which he gained through the electoral college system while losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.
This time, Trump won both the electoral college, by 312 to 226, as well as the popular vote, by a margin of about 2.5m.
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“I think you’re going to have a pretty sort of normal transfer, and I think we will respect the wishes of the American people … in contrast to what happened January 6, 2021,” Morelle told Politico. “I do feel like that’s worth saying over and over again.”
More than 1,500 people have been charged with offences in relation to the 2021 attack, which resulted in five deaths on the day and a further four in the days and months that followed, including police officers who killed themselves. About 1,000 participants have been convicted.
Trump has promised to issue presidential pardons to some of the January 6 attackers beginning in the “first hour” of his second term, which will start later this month, but Manger has warned that such a decision could jeopardize the safety of all US law enforcement officers.
“What message does that send?” Manger told the Washington Post on Sunday. “What message does that send to police officers across this nation, if someone doesn’t think that a conviction for an assault or worse against a police officer is something that should be upheld, given what we ask police officers to do every day?”
While the snow-filled day didn’t result in a meaningful anniversary rally outside the Capitol on Monday, a handful of Trump loyalists instead gathered in the lower levels of a Washington Hyatt Regency down the street to deliver their vision of the future for January 6 participants.
The conference, organized from prison by January 6 defendant Jake Lang, featured several other insurrectionists as well as prominent rightwing figures like Mike Lindell, influencer Isabella Maria Deluca and self-styled “secretary of retribution” Ivan Raiklin.
The event was a far cry from the thousands who stormed the Capitol on that fateful day in 2021, but the setting did not diminish speakers’ intense rhetoric, especially when considering Raiklin’s vision of vengeance. According to Raiklin, a former Green Beret and leader in the movement to overturn the 2020 election results, Trump’s first task should be to declare a sweeping clemency plan that would extend to all insurrectionists.
“Everybody,” Raiklin said on the sidelines of the conference, “even the violent ones that are in [jail]. They’ve already faced their time, OK, because it’s all political. They were overcharged.”
