On 6 January 2021 a crowd of supporters of Donald Trump broke into the Capitol while Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s victory. What is known and how the count was completed.
On Wednesday 6 January 2021, the US Congress was holding a joint session to count the Electoral College votes, the last step that closes the presidential election. The session was chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, who was to announce the winner: Joe Biden, who had defeated Donald Trump in the 3 November election. At midday, the outgoing president addressed his supporters at the Ellipse park, next to the White House, and repeated his claims of electoral fraud.
What happened
Thousands of Trump supporters then walked to the Capitol, and hundreds of them broke through police lines. By about 2 p.m. Washington time they had entered the building. Both chambers, which were debating an objection to Arizona’s votes at the time, suspended the session; lawmakers were evacuated or sheltered in place, and Pence was taken out of the Senate chamber. The Capitol was locked down and the count was halted for hours, with lawmakers waiting to return to their seats. The mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, imposed a curfew from 6 p.m. until 6 a.m. the following morning.
At about 4 p.m., Trump released a video in which he repeated his claims of electoral fraud and told his supporters to go home “in peace”. Washington police confirmed that four people had died: a woman shot inside the building and three others from medical emergencies. Officers were also injured and arrests were made.
The count ends in the early hours
Lawmakers met again that same night. They voted on the two objections tabled by groups of Republican members: the Arizona objection was rejected 93 to 6 in the Senate and 303 to 121 in the House of Representatives, and the Pennsylvania one, after midnight, 92 to 7 and 282 to 138. In all four votes, the votes in favour of the objections came only from Republicans.
In the early hours of 7 January, before 4 a.m. Washington time, Congress completed the count: Joe Biden received 306 electoral votes and Donald Trump 232, out of 538, with 270 needed for a majority. Pence declared the result. Biden is due to take office on 20 January.
The legal framework
The procedure is set by the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution and a federal statute: on 6 January, at 1 p.m., Congress meets in joint session to count the electoral votes certified by each state, with the vice president presiding as president of the Senate. For an objection to a state’s votes to succeed, both chambers must approve it separately, and only then are those votes excluded from the count; in this case neither did, and the certified results stood. The Constitution also fixes the end of the presidential term at noon on 20 January.
This note records only what was known up to 7 January. Questions of responsibility, and the political and legal consequences of what happened, remain to be settled. For anyone with personal or business interests in the United States, what matters in the short term is the institutional calendar, which continued despite the interruption: the inauguration is scheduled for 20 January.
The procedure ended where the law says it must end: with the count completed in Congress.
This article is general information. It is not legal, tax or investment advice, and it does not take anyone’s particular circumstances into account.
