Minnesota’s senior Senator Amy Klobuchar (D) says security will be top of mind during this year's congressional vote to certify the 2024 presidential election.
Its been four years since the riots at the U.S. Capitol in the wake of President-elect Donald Trump's loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 Election. The anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack is being marked Monday by a number of congressional Democrats, including current and former leaders as Republicans remained mostly silent as they prepare to certify the election of the man who incited that very mob.
It's something Senator Klobuchar says she and others in congress have worked hard on to prevent this year.
"Last January 6th, a number of officers couldn't even get riot gear, and it was in fact locked on a bus," Klobuchar tells WCCO Radio. "And there was one officer over the radio that said, 'does anyone have a plan? Does anyone have a plan?' This time, everything's changed. There's a clear plan."
Senator Klobuchar says that new plan was created in part from over a hundred recommendations from the Inspector General for both Monday's vote and the Presidential Inauguration on January 20.
Klobuchar says things look a lot different this time.
"There are bad actors, as we just saw the horrific terrorist attack in New Orleans," Klobuchar said. "We know they're always going to be a threat, but what we want to do this time, be much better planned, and have more police. And at that point, right now in this moment in time, we have accomplished that."
Klobuchar will also play a role in planning the event with the Congressional Committee of Inaugural Ceremonies.
Lawmakers in the snowy Capitol will gather at Monday at 1:00 p.m. ET to count the electoral votes in the 2024 election and declare Donald Trump the winner.
The joint session, which takes place on Jan. 6 every four years, is the final step after the Electoral College meets in December to officially elect the winner of the White House.
At the center of the process are sealed electoral certificates from each state, which are brought into the House chamber in special mahogany boxes that are used for the occasion. Those same boxes were rushed to safety four years ago as rioters breached the Capitol.
Bipartisan representatives of both chambers will read the results out loud and do an official count. No challenges to the results are expected this year, which means the process should move quickly.
Vice President Kamala Harris, as president of the Senate, will preside over the session and certify her defeat to Trump.
Remembering January 6th, 2021
Rep. Nancy Pelosi, who was speaker when the insurrection happened, marked the occasion, saying the attack “shook our Republic to its core.”
“We must never forget the extraordinary courage of law enforcement officers on January 6th who stood in the breach and stared down the insurrectionists to protect the Capitol, the Congress and the Constitution,” the California lawmaker said in a statement.
Her successor, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries echoed her sentiment, saying the “American people must never be allowed to the forget the events” of Jan. 6. He added that “history will always remember the attempted insurrection and we will never allow the violence that unfolded in plain sight to be whitewashed.”
In an opinion piece published Sunday in The Washington Post, Biden recalled Jan. 6, 2021, writing that “violent insurrectionists attacked the Capitol.”
“We should be proud that our democracy withstood this assault,” Biden wrote. “And we should be glad we will not see such a shameful attack again this year.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.