Congress certifies the election after the January 6, 2021 riot

“Hang Mike Pence,” the Vice President of the House, and the Associated Lobbyists that voted to end the presidential election in 2021

Four years ago, thousands of Donald Trump’s supporters tried to storm the Capitol in a bid to try and steal the election from him, but this year, they were prevented from achieving their goal by security barriers.

Vice President Harris, who lost the presidential election to Trump, oversaw the proceedings certifying Trump’s win and announced the final tally: 312 to 226.

Lawmakers from both parties applauded when the results were read. When the votes in his home state of Ohio were read in his favor, the Vice President-elect stood and clapped as he received his election certification.

Pence praised the peaceful transfer of power and applauded lawmakers of both parties for the smooth process on Monday. He said it was admirable that the VP would preside over the certification of the election that she lost.

We fight like crazy. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump told his supporters in 2021 during a rally on the ellipse outside the White House hours before the certification process was set to begin.

Trump wanted his Vice President to ignore the electoral count in favor of Joe Biden. Some of the protesters who marched to the Capitol after Trump’s speech yelled, “hang Mike Pence” as he made it clear that he wouldn’t intervene.

The speaker of the house sat next to Harris on Monday and wrote a legal brief in support of the effort to dispute the results.

Ahead of the ceremony, many Democratic lawmakers issued statements marking their concerns about Trump’s actions in 2021 and declaring the process would move forward without any disruption. Several also argued the GOP was essentially trying to rewrite history about that day.

Republicans didn’t pay much attention to the violence or unrest that erupted after the certification was delayed.

Previously, a single member of the House and one from the Senate could file an objection to a state’s electoral count. This opened up a potentially days-long debate period with no clear resolution if the two chambers then disagreed with each other on their respective votes on the objection.

And the law significantly narrows the reasons a lawmaker may object to results, essentially making clear that partisan differences over election policies in a certain state aren’t a valid reason to object to the state’s results.

New Rules for Counting 2021: Judicial Investigations and a Proud Boys Candidate Enrique Tarrio

The Department of Justice on Monday said it has charged 1,583 people with crimes in federal court in connection with the events of Jan. 6, 2021. There are charges of assaults against more than 140 Capitol and District of Columbia police officers. The FBI is also still trying to find others wanted for violent assaults that day.

Separately, lawyers for convicted Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio on Monday renewed their request for a pardon from Trump. Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role in the attack.

Tarrio was held in special housing units while in prison, limiting his movements outside of his cell. His lawyer told NPR that kind of isolation can lead to major mental health problems.

The post- election period has been profoundly impacted by that change. The election officials say their offices do not get the same phone calls. Surveys find that the majority of Americans trust the results. The proceedings on Monday might be the best example of this cycle’s contrast.

“January 6th is the date, if there is one date, at which we witness the peaceful transfer of power in the United States,” said Rick Pildes, an election law expert at New York University. The most important moment in democracy is this one. … In the background, will be the resonances of what happened in 2020. “Voting for an election.”

In many ways, experts expect the certification at the Capitol to return to what it looked like before 2020: a simple bureaucratic step that makes a result that Americans have long known official.

Congress passed new rules in response to the chaos four years ago. Legal experts thought the previous framework was full of ambiguities, but after the last election Trump’s legal team tried to exploit it.

The Electoral Count Reform Act was badly drafted, said Pildes, a key legal voice advising a bipartisan group of lawmakers. “The one thing you want in a legal framework for resolving a disputed election — and this is true of any election, but especially the presidential election — you want a clear legal framework that’s established in advance so that it can’t be manipulated for partisan purposes at the moment of crisis.”

This is the first presidential election to be certified under the new law, which also clarified how states finalized their results in December. Some of the important changes will affect Monday’s proceedings.

Even before 2020, which saw more than 100 Republican members of the House and Senate object to the results in response to Trump’s false claims, objections had started to become more common as the electoral processes in 2000, 2004, and 2016 all involved some element of controversy.

Congress began sliding into this practice of having some members object to receiving votes in a state because of how the voting process was played out there, Pildes said. “The [ECRA] is designed to put that genie back in the bottle.”

Pildes added that he thinks the violence last election cycle will also make members of Congress more hesitant to object to results for purely political reasons.

The Capitol’s Homeland Security Security Event on Jan. 6: The Frustrated Case of Al Gore, Raskin, and Raskin

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Trump foil who served on the Jan. 6 investigative select committee, told NPR he’s proud that Democrats have accepted the 2024 election results, even if certifying Trump as a victor after all his election lies has created “a very frustrating situation.”

At the time, legal experts said that wasn’t true, that the vice president’s role in certification, even according to the original Electoral Count Act, was purely ministerial.

Al Gore did what the vice president does in 2001) and oversaw the certification of the election in favor of his opponent.

Officials across the U.S. government have admitted that security on the day of the Capitol riot was not commensurate with the risk of a mass violence event.

In September the Department of Homeland Security decided that the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6 would be designated a National Special Security event and freed up more federal resources for security.

U.S. Capitol Police have been carrying out drills with officers from 16 different agencies ahead of Jan. 6, according to WJLA in Washington, and temporary fencing has also gone up around the Capitol.