Harris to certify Trump’s US election win, four years after Capitol riot

Four years to the day when a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol, Congress will convene to ratify his nomination.

With Trump’s victory secured, the biggest obstacle facing lawmakers this year is the big snowball. Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Trump defeated in the 2024 election, will preside over the ceremony in accordance with the US Constitution.

But the shadow of January 6, 2021 continues to haunt Monday, even as Trump and his allies rebrand the attack as a “day of love.”

Strong security is in place in Washington DC, and the current president, Joe Biden, has vowed to prevent a repeat of four years ago, which resulted in several deaths and millions of dollars in damage.

The certificate, which was scheduled for Monday at 13:00 on Monday, is often a symbol of America’s commitment to the peaceful transfer of power despite disagreements.

But this time, it has been a sign of Trump’s stunning comeback and his complete takeover of the Republican Party.

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

House Speaker Mike Johnson vowed to go ahead with the bill despite the weather, telling Fox News: “Whether we’re in a hurricane or not, we’re going to be in the room and make sure it gets done.”

Mr. Harris, vowed that “I will do my job as Vice President to ensure the results of the 2024 election.”

“This job is a sacred duty — one that I will pursue guided by patriotism, loyalty to our Constitution, and unwavering faith in the American people,” he said in a video.

In most cases there would be little reason for the vice president to announce that intention. The US Constitution requires that the ratification of the presidential election take place on January 6, and that the vice president oversees the vote.

But the last time the US Congress met to approve the election of the US President, the vote was delayed for several hours because the riots, which are affected by the false belief that the 2020 elections were stolen from Trump, windows were broken, they crossed the election lines. police, demolished the US House room, and destroyed the office of former speaker Nancy Pelosi.

In a speech in Washington DC that day, before the violence, Trump told people to “fight like hell” and called on 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. Trump’s vice president at the time, Mike Pence, took cover when terrorists placed a plaque on the Capitol grounds and called for him to be hanged because he refused to misrepresent the results in Trump’s favor.

Afterward, prison workers on Capitol Hill worked hard to clean up broken windows, trash corridors, and even human waste, an event described as “despicable.” Congressional staffers spent the next several months calculating the agony of the attack.

The riots cost nearly $3m (£2.4m), injured more than 100 police officers, and shocked American politics.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, which millions of Americans watched on television and on television, there was little debate as to who was to blame.

The US House of Representatives impeached Trump on the charges that sparked the scandal, but the US Senate did not meet the two-thirds vote needed to convict him. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, criticized Trump, saying the mob “did this because they were fed lies by the most powerful man in the world – because they were angry that he lost the election”.

Trump has also faced federal charges of trying to interfere in the 2020 election, which he has denied. But the Department of Justice (DoJ) was forced to drop the case after he was elected, due to policies that prevent 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 crisis and its cause.

Trump said “there is nothing wrong with it,” at the October 2024 annual conference.

He has called the people indicted by the DoJ “prisoners” and “political prisoners.” And his new vice president, JD Vance, refused to admit during the presidential debates that Trump had lost the 2020 election.

Americans now have a very different view of the day. A January 2024 Washington Post/University of Maryland poll showed that a quarter of Americans believed in a conspiracy theory that the FBI had started the attack. Although most Americans believe that January 6, 2021 is an attack on democracy, only 18% of Republicans thought so, the survey showed.

Trump won seven states in the presidential election on November 5, giving him a stunning victory in the electoral college, the process that decides who will take the presidency.

It will be Harris’ job on Monday to read the college votes of each winner.

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 both houses of Congress, albeit thinly.

This represents a remarkable political recovery from his election defeat in 2020, and a conviction in 2024 – the first for a current or former US president.

Trump’s promises after returning to office include pardoning those convicted of the attack. He says many of them have been “arrested wrongly”, although he admitted that “many of them, may have been out of control”.

In contrast, Mr. Biden asked the American people not to forget what happened.

“We should remember the adage that any country that forgets its past must repeat it,” Biden wrote in the Washington Post over the weekend.

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