Five years after rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a violent effort to overturn President Trump’s 2020 election loss, Democrats in Congress on Tuesday highlighted Mr. Trump’s role in stoking the mob and forcefully rebutted his efforts to rewrite the history of the attack.
At an event at the Capitol, House Democrats invited a former Capitol Police officer, one of the rioters and former lawmakers to describe the events of that day and to criticize Mr. Trump for playing down the riot and giving broad clemency to people charged in connection with it. More than a dozen Democratic senators planned to deliver similar remarks on the Senate floor.
“These pardons are among the most sickening things Donald Trump has done in office,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said on Tuesday. “His betrayal of law enforcement, of democracy, makes a mockery of the rule of law.”
At the Capitol, Republicans largely ignored the grim anniversary, holding no events to observe the day. But across Washington, Mr. Trump stepped up the false claims he has repeated for years about the assault. At an annual gathering of House Republicans, he attacked Democrats who investigated his role spurring the riot, repeated his debunked claim that the 2020 election was “rigged” and claimed he did not instigate the violence of Jan. 6.
The White House also launched a new page on its website in which it claimed that those involved in the brutal assault were “peaceful patriotic protesters.” It also baselessly faulted the House speaker at the time, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, for security failures, and it laid blame for the violence on the Capitol Police, some of whose officers were brutalized during the attack, including one who later died.
On Capitol Hill, Pamela Hemphill, a onetime rioter who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor offense after she forcibly entered the Capitol, countered that narrative. She told House Democrats that she had been motivated to join the mob storming the building because she believed that Mr. Trump backed their efforts.
“I had fallen for the president’s lies, just like many of his supporters,” said Ms. Hemphill, her voice quavering.
“Jan. 6 was an insurrection,” she later said. “I broke the law.”
Democratic senators said they planned to hold the floor on Tuesday afternoon in order to rebut Mr. Trump’s efforts to deflect blame for the assault and to accuse Republicans of trying to undermine the upcoming midterm elections. Lawmakers from both chambers also planned to gather on the steps of the Capitol later on Tuesday for a solemn remembrance.
Taken together, their efforts represented a push by Democrats to keep the riot at the forefront of voters’ minds as they prepare for this year’s elections, in which the party has signaled that it plans to make affordability the center of its appeal.
“Instead of fulfilling his promise to lower the cost of living on Day 1, Donald Trump pardoned hundreds of violent felons who brutally beat police officers while storming the United States Capitol,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, said on Tuesday.
The House Democrats essentially — though unofficially — revived the now defunct select committee that they created to investigate the riot in 2021. They invited former Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of the two Republicans who served on that panel, to speak on Tuesday.
Republicans denounced the makeshift hearing as illegitimate and politically motivated. Representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who was tasked with leading a new panel to reinvestigate Jan. 6, said in a statement that Democrats’ hearing was a “partisan exercise” meant to target Mr. Trump and his allies.
Mr. Loudermilk’s panel has yet to meet or hold a public hearing, but it is part of a larger effort by Republicans to recast the events of Jan. 6 and shift the blame away from Mr. Trump.
Even as the White House asserted on its website that the Capitol Police had “turned a peaceful demonstration into chaos,” Winston Pingeon, a former Capitol Police officer who appeared at the Democrats’ hearing, called out the rioters on Jan. 6 who had moved quickly from taunting him to violently assaulting him. He described being “called a traitor, violently assaulted in the line of duty, punched in the face,” and said that his assailants cited Mr. Trump.
“The mob said to me, ‘President Trump sent us,’ and, ‘We don’t want to hurt you, but we will,’” said Mr. Pingeon, who left the force in 2021 after five years of service,
Seated just feet away from him, Ms. Hemphill, who has experienced a sharp political reversal since the riot, grew emotional as she looked to Mr. Pingeon and asked for forgiveness for “being part of the mob that put you and so many officers in danger.”
Ms. Hemphill has rejected Mr. Trump’s pardon, maintaining that she is a “convicted criminal” and that she deserved to face justice for her role in the riot.
Democrats have focused intently on those pardons as they contend that Mr. Trump has flouted the rule of law and dishonored the police officers who were injured defending the Capitol during the riot.
They have also pointed to a continued fight over the installation of a plaque honoring members of law enforcement for their roles protecting lawmakers during the attack. The plaque was commissioned in a 2022 bipartisan spending bill but has been in storage since House Republicans took the majority.
In a statement, Speaker Mike Johnson’s office said the statute that authorized the plaque was “not implementable,” and suggested that Democrats should work with House committees to develop appropriate alternatives.
But Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, asserted that the failure to install the commemoration was part of a collective effort by Republicans to erase Jan. 6 from the national memory.
“Republicans today are observing this solemn anniversary by doing exactly nothing,” he said.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
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