PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A joint session of Congress on Monday, under heavy security, certified Donald Trump as the winner of the 2024 presidential election, without challenge—in stark contrast to the chaos of the same date four years ago, when a mob of Trump’s supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol, trying to prevent the 2020 election results from being certified.
In that siege, over 140 police officers were assaulted—including more than 80 from the U.S. Capitol Police and more than 60 from Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The Capitol building was damaged. Government property was damaged, destroyed and stolen. By current estimates, losses from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection exceed $2.8 million.
National correspondent Steven Portnoy joined KYW’s Ian Bush and Carol MacKenzie on Monday to describe some of the measures in place to prevent a repeat. A lightly edited transcript of the interview follows, as well as additional facts about Jan. 6, 2021.
Ian Bush: More security on hand today?
Steven Portnoy: No doubt about that. The Secret Service has declared this a national special security event. Secret Service has the primary responsibility of ensuring the safe counting of electoral votes today, in addition to Capitol Police. But there's no more effective measure that can be applied in terms of security than the frozen precipitation that is now covering Capitol Hill and all of Washington. There are about four inches of snow already on the ground, and it will continue snowing through the day.
Members of the House and Senate will traipse through the snow as they make their way to the joint session and this process, which is a solemn one, called for under the 12th Amendment, and provided for under the Electoral Count Act, most recently reformed in 2022, will have Vice President Harris overseeing the count and announcing that Donald Trump has defeated her.
Al Gore did this same thing 24 years ago, announcing that George W. Bush defeated him. And of course, four years ago, Mike Pence shrugged off the suggestion that he had some sort of extra-constitutional or extra-legal power to reject the electors from certain states.
The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 clarifies that the vice president's role today is strictly ministerial. She will have no power to set aside a state's electoral votes.
No objections are expected, as we saw four years ago. They'd be much tougher to make now, because under the recent reforms, it would take 20 senators and 87 members of the House—a fifth of each body—to co-sign objections that would see the joint session devolving, as we saw four years ago. Back then, it was a single senator and a single member of the House who could co-sign an objection, and what we saw four years ago was the first time that it ever happened.
Carol Mackenzie: The U.S. Attorney's Office released more information about it today. What more are we learning about the attack?
It's a sort of a glance at the actions the Justice Department has taken over the last four years to prosecute hundreds of people, more than 1,000 convictions, and hundreds more people are still being charged or may be charged by the Justice Department.
The big question is, what happens two weeks from today? Donald Trump, the president-elect, has vowed that in the first nine minutes of his term, he'll start granting pardons to Jan. 6 defendants. How wide-ranging and how sweeping will those pardons be? We don't yet know. Will they involve people who were convicted of seditious conspiracy?
Republicans have urged the president-elect to review these cases, case by case. We'll see what happens.
Facts about Jan. 6, 2021
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia on Monday released a statement outlining the status of arrests, trials and sentences associated with the Capitol attack. These data points are significant, because political rhetoric about Jan. 6, 2021, has been used to blur, misrepresent and deny the reality of what happened that day. For example, Trump has false stated that the rioters were peaceful and unarmed, and he has called the people convicted of crimes committed on that day “patriots,” “hostages” and “political prisoners.”
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office:
— There are about 1,583 federal criminal defendants.
— 180 people were charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon.
— Weapons included firearms, chemical sprays, tasers, axes, hatchets, knives, a sword, and makeshift weapons, including broken piece of office furniture, pieces of fencing and bike racks, stolen riot shields, baseball bats, hockey sticks, flagpoles, PVC pipes and reinforced knuckle gloves.
— 608 people were charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding police.
— 174 people were charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious injury to an officer.
— Five people who have been charged remain fugitives from federal authorities.
— 1,009 individuals have pleaded guilty and acknowledged their crimes—327 to felonies and 682 to misdemeanors.
—At least 261 people have been found guilty at contested trials in U.S. District Court, including 10 guilty of seditious conspiracy.
— 327 pleaded guilty to felonies: 172 for assaulting law enforcement, 130 for obstructing law enforcement, 69 for assaulting law enforcement with a dangerous or deadly weapon; and 4 for conspiring to use force against the United States.
— 667 people have been sentenced to terms of incarceration, and 145 were given home incarceration sentences.
Four years of 'unrelenting integrity'
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland put out a statement Monday, reading in part:
“The public servants of the Justice Department have sought to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy with unrelenting integrity. They have conducted themselves in a manner that adheres to the rule of law and honors our obligation to protect the civil rights and civil liberties of everyone in this country.
“I am proud of them, and I am grateful to them for the work they have done and the sacrifices they have made over the last four years to seek accountability for the January 6 attack on the Capitol.”