As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House, his proposals on issues such as immigration, taxes and trade have sparked heated debate.
But two weeks before his return to one of the most powerful political offices in the world, Trump remains animated by the grievances of the past and is devising a plan of attack against political rivals, critics and defeat in the 2020 election that he never accepted.
Much of his rhetoric focused on the events of January 6, 2021, when a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the certification of the election results. Monday marks the fourth anniversary of this uprising.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters on Dec. 22, Trump took time during his speech to rail against the Jan. 6 Committee, a congressional panel that investigated Trump’s efforts before, during and after the insurrection.
“The unselected committee of political thugs, the J6 committee, what they did is so illegal,” he told the audience.
But Trump’s focus on January 6 isn’t just limited to his critics. He has also pledged to offer a full pardon to the rioters who took part in the violent attack on the Capitol, an event that many of his critics call an insurrection.
What was January 6th, how many people were charged in connection with the riots, and how was Trump able to use his presidential powers to release those convicted from prison? We will address these and other questions in this short explanation.
What was January 6th?
After his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election, Trump forcefully spread false claims that the election was “rigged” and stolen from him through massive fraud.
Those efforts went beyond mere rhetoric and included a plan to replace officials who cast votes in the Electoral College based on the popular vote in their respective states with a separate group of pro-Trump voters.
On January 6, 2021, Trump held a rally in the capital, Washington, D.C., where he railed against the election results and urged his supporters to “fight like hell.”
“If you catch someone cheating, completely different rules may apply,” he said.
Trump ended the speech by urging his supporters to march to the Capitol to “peacefully and patriotically make your voice heard” as Congress met to certify the election results.
Over the next few hours, a mob of Trump’s supporters, some armed, attacked police, tried to hold back the crowd, and stormed the building to prevent Trump’s loss from being certified.
One of the rioters, Ashli Babbitt, was shot by a police officer as she tried to enter the House chamber.
How many people have been charged in connection with the riot?
According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the most recent data available as of August 6, 2024, more than 1,488 people have been prosecuted in connection with the attack on the Capitol.
Those numbers included people from all 50 states and the capital, Washington, D.C. Approximately 547 defendants were charged with assaulting, resisting or obstructing officers or employees, including 163 people charged with assault with a deadly weapon.
What did Trump say about the participants?
Trump described those charged and jailed for their actions on Jan. 6 as victims of political persecution, calling them “patriots” and “political prisoners” and vowing to use presidential pardon powers to release them from prison fired when he returns to the White House.
In a social media post in March, Trump said one of his first acts as president would be to “free the wrongfully imprisoned hostages of January 6th!”
What did Trump say on January 6th about politicians who criticized his role?
Trump has been far less lenient with his political rivals as they have monitored efforts to draw attention to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and criticized his actions on Jan. 6.
In July, Trump published a post on his social media site Truth Social in which he said that former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, one of two Republican members of a U.S. House of Representatives investigation into January 6 and Trump’s efforts to overturn the election “should be confronted with the military on television”. “Tribunals” tried for “high treason.”
In another post, Trump shared a picture of 15 lawmakers, including members of the Jan. 6 investigation, and said they “should go to prison” instead of former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who served a four-month sentence in 2024. He opposed it a subpoena in the January 6 congressional investigation.
What do Americans think about the events of January 6th?
A December 2023 Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found that about 55 percent of U.S. adults believe that January 6 was an attack on U.S. democracy that should “not be forgotten.”
But Republican voters are significantly less likely to agree with that opinion, and more than two-thirds continue to believe Biden’s election in 2020 was illegitimate, according to polls. Republicans are also more likely to say Trump is not responsible for the Jan. 6 violence. Only 14 percent blame him, compared to 53 percent of U.S. adults.
Why is this important?
While the majority of people in the United States continue to view January 6 and Trump’s role in that day’s events negatively, these negative feelings did not stop him from defeating Democratic rival Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
Now, as Trump prepares to return to the White House, some see Trump’s continued insistence that he is the real winner of the 2020 election and his stated desire to prosecute his political rivals as evidence that he has a more vindictive agenda and will pursue a more anti-democratic agenda than during his first term in office.
