The transfer of power to Donald Trump appears to be taking place peacefully.
No mobs are gathering to disrupt Congress’ Jan. 6 counting of electoral votes. No Democratic leader is questioning the results of the election or concocting complex legal theories to thwart the outcome. The biggest risk of obstruction appears likely to come from a storm system that threatens to dump several inches of snow on the region overnight.
If all goes as expected, Trump’s victory will be certified by late Monday afternoon in a ceremony overseen by his vanquished rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, who will preside over the proceedings in her capacity as Senate president. Harris has made it clear that she will carry out a simple transfer of power. In doing so, she follows in the footsteps of all vice presidents before her — including Mike Pence, who resisted pressure from Trump to refuse to count voters from states Trump lost in 2020.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries drew Republican applause when he acknowledged Trump’s victory during a speech in the House of Representatives on Friday.
“It’s OK,” Jeffries said in a moment of gallows humor directed at his GOP colleagues. “There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle.”
It is the complete antithesis of the carnage unleashed under clear blue skies four years ago by thousands of Trump supporters, fueled by lies about a stolen election. Hundreds of them beat down police officers guarding the Capitol as the mob fought to stop Congress from counting the electoral votes that would make Joe Biden president.
The attack sparked the largest federal criminal investigation ever, spawned a serious criminal case against Trump, led to a failed legal effort to remove him from the ballot and defined the political climate of the last two election cycles. Democrats called Trump a threat to democracy and the president-elect used the cases to unite his base and claim political persecution.
The expectation is that the meeting of the House and Senate this time will be almost shockingly routine. Harris will convene the joint session at 1 p.m. Lawmakers from both parties will announce each state’s certified electors, and Harris will confirm that they have been counted.
While members have the ability to appeal to voters over possible legal or constitutional flaws, no Democrats have indicated they will do so, and many have rejected such an effort. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who filed a token objection to Trump’s electors in 2017, said he would not repeat the move this time — and said Democrats would prioritize “upholding the constitutional order ‘.
Monday’s joint session is also the first to be subject to a 2022 law intended to prevent attempts to corrupt the transition of power and limit lawmakers’ ability to question the results. This law reduces the already small chance of any objections that could hinder the procedure.
Yet the general air of calm in Washington belies a deep, simmering tension between those who watched the country’s democratic institutions collapse on January 6, 2021, and those who hope to whitewash it — especially as Trump seeks to rewrite the history of the attack . at the Capitol and is preparing to pardon many of the perpetrators. The Justice Department has charged more than 1,500 people for their involvement in the attack, and more than 1,200 people have pleaded guilty or been convicted.
Judges in federal district court in Washington are marking the four-year anniversary of the attack by trying and sentencing more cases, continuing to do their work despite mounting pressure to pause cases pending Trump’s clemency decisions.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth — an outspoken defender of the court’s work in the Jan. 6 cases — timed the sentencing of a prominent defendant to coincide with the joint session of Congress. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who was once set to preside over Trump’s criminal trial on charges related to his efforts to undermine the 2020 election, is holding a hearing in preparation for a Jan. 6 trial next week. And U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta has scheduled a hearing in a lawsuit filed by members of Congress and Capitol Police against Trump for his role in fomenting the violence four years ago.
Across the city, advocates for the January 6 suspects are planning a news conference to urge Trump to grant sweeping pardons, even for those convicted of the most extreme violence against police. It is a consequence of the unlikely political power that the defendants have built up over the past four years as Trump linked his own fight against the justice system to theirs.
Others are planning a walk for Ashli Babbitt, the Jan. 6 rioter who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to enter a room next to the House chamber.
Republican leaders in Congress have no plans to mark the anniversary of the attack, and House leaders have instead pledged in recent days to investigate the Jan. 6 select committee that investigated Trump’s role investigated during the attack two years ago. Speaker Mike Johnson and top lieutenants lashed out as Biden awarded the panel’s leaders — Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney — prestigious Presidential Citizens Medals. Trump also took the opportunity to attack Cheney, a longtime political nemesis, and raise her possible prosecution.
Amid all this, Capitol Police, D.C. officers and Secret Service agents are preparing to protect the Capitol on Monday and at Trump’s inauguration two weeks later. Hundreds of them faced the crowd at the Capitol four years earlier, wondering if they would go home that night.
Dozens have testified in trials of the Jan. 6 defendants who once opposed them, describing under oath the chaos and fear they experienced — and often still live with.
“You ask these officers, ‘Are you confident today?’” Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger said at a news conference Friday. “I was at roll call this morning at seven o’clock and spoke to officers. I asked for a show of hands. “How many of you were here four years ago?” About half of them raised their hands. The other half came here knowing exactly what they were getting into. And they’re here because they want to be, and if you ask most of them, they were here because of January 6th. These are officers who want to be on the front lines of what’s happening here.”
