Anniversary of Capitol Riot Was Marked in Very Different Ways

Five years ago outside the White House, outgoing President Trump told a crowd of supporters to head to the Capitol—"and I'll be there with you"—in protest as Congress was affirming the 2020 election victory for Democrat Joe Biden. A short time later, the world watched as the seat of US power descended into chaos, and democracy hung in the balance.

• On the fifth anniversary of Jan. 6, 2021, there was no official event to memorialize what happened that day, when a mob made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue, battled police at the Capitol barricades, and stormed inside, as lawmakers fled, the AP reports. The political parties refuse to agree on a shared history of the events, which were broadcast around the globe. And the official plaque honoring the police who defended the Capitol has never been hung.

Instead, the day displayed the divisions that still define Washington, and the country, and the White House itself launched a new website with its own revised history of what happened, blaming Democrats, police, and Mike Pence.

• Trump, during a lengthy morning speech to House Republicans away from the Capitol at the rebranded Kennedy Center now carrying his own name, shifted blame for Jan. 6 onto the rioters themselves. The president said he had intended only for his supporters to go "peacefully and patriotically" to confront Congress as it certified Biden's win. He blamed the media for focusing on other parts of his speech that day.
• At the same time, Democrats held their own morning meeting at the Capitol, reconvening members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack for a panel discussion. Recalling the history of the day is important, they said, in order to prevent what Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin warned was the GOP's "Orwellian project of forgetting."
• And the former leader of the militant Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, summoned people for a midday march retracing the rioters' steps from the White House to the Capitol, this time to honor Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt and those who died in the Jan. 6 siege and its aftermath. More than 100 people gathered, including Babbitt's mother. The New York Times reports that some of the marchers surrounded a group of DC police officers, calling them "subhuman scum."

• Tarrio and others are putting pressure on the Trump administration to punish officials who investigated and prosecuted the Jan. 6 rioters. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for orchestrating the Jan. 6 attack, and he is among more than 1,500 defendants who saw their charges dropped when Trump issued a sweeping pardon on his return to the White House last year. The White House, in its new report, highlighted the work the president has already done to free those charged and turned the blame on Democrats for certifying Biden's election victory.
• House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer held a candlelight vigil outside the Capitol with lawmakers and family members of police officers to mark the anniversary.
• Few Republicans joined in the day's remembrances, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, responding to requests for comment about the delay in hanging the plaque honoring the police at the Capitol, as required by law, said in a statement on the eve of the anniversary that the statute "is not implementable," and proposed alternatives "also do not comply with the statute."

• At the morning hearing at the Capitol, lawmakers heard from a range of witnesses and others—including former US Capitol Police officer Winston Pingeon, who said as a kid he always dreamed of being a cop. But on that day, he thought he was going to die in the mayhem on the steps of the Capitol. "I implore America to not forget what happened," he said, urging the country to find common ground. "I believe the vast majority of Americans have so much more in common than what separates us."
• Also testifying was Pamela Hemphill, a rioter who refused Trump's pardon, blamed the president for the violence, and silenced the room as she apologized to the officer sitting alongside her at the witness table, stifling tears. "I can't allow them not be recognized, to be lied about," Hemphill said about the police who she said also saved her life as she fell and was trampled on by the mob. "Until I can see that plaque get up there, I'm not done."
• Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk, who has been tapped by Johnson to lead a new committee to probe other theories about what happened on Jan. 6, rejected Tuesday's session as a "partisan exercise" designed to hurt Trump and his allies.