THE NEW YORK TIMES: Fifth anniversary of Capitol riots brings together ex-protester, lawmaker and fallen cop

Five years after rioters stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, in a violent effort to overturn President Donald 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 criticise Mr Trump for playing down the riot and giving broad clemency to people charged in connection with it.

A group of Democratic senators delivered 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. “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, 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 January 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, Nancy Pelosi, for security failures, and it laid blame for the violence on the Capitol police, some of whose officers were brutalised during the attack, including one who later died.

On Capitol Hill, Pamela Hemphill, a onetime rioter who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour 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 Trump backed their efforts.

“I had fallen for the president’s lies, just like many of his supporters,” said Hemphill, her voice quavering.

“Jan 6 was an insurrection,” she later said. “I broke the law.”

Democratic senators held the floor Tuesday afternoon, rebutting Trump’s efforts to deflect blame for the assault. Several dozen lawmakers from both chambers also gathered on the steps of the Senate later Tuesday, along with families of police officers who died following the attack, 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 signalled that it plans to make affordability the center of its appeal.

“Instead of fulfilling his promise to lower the cost of living on day one, Donald Trump pardoned hundreds of violent felons who brutally beat police officers while storming the United States Capitol,” Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, said Tuesday.

The House Democrats essentially — though unofficially — revived the now defunct select committee that they created to investigate the riot in 2021. They invited Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, one of the two Republicans who served on that panel, to speak Tuesday.

Republicans denounced the makeshift hearing as illegitimate and politically motivated. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who was tasked with leading a new panel to reinvestigate January 6, said in a statement that Democrats’ hearing was a “partisan exercise” meant to target Trump and his allies.

His 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 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 January 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 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.”

Mr 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 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.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said that he planned to push lawmakers to find a solution that would allow the memorial to be installed. “Today is the anniversary of what I actually consider to be one of the worst days of my 11 years in the Senate,” he said.

But Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., asserted that the failure to install the commemoration was part of a collective effort by Republicans to erase January 6 from the national memory.

“Republicans today are observing this solemn anniversary by doing exactly nothing,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.