Congress to certify Trump’s election win as shadow of 2020 Capitol riot looms

The US Congress will certify Donald Trump’s presidential election victory on Monday in an event heavy with symbolism four years to the day since the he incited a violent mob to disrupt a similar ceremony in a bid to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

The vice-president, Kamala Harris, Trump’s defeated Democratic opponent in November’s election, will preside over a joint Senate and House of Representatives session to validate the result, which longstanding convention dictates should be a mere formality in the peaceful transfer of power.

However, the proceedings will take place amid unprecedented security measures from US Capitol and Washington DC police, fearful of a repeat of the tumultuous events of 6 January 2021, when Trump’s supporters tried to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory amid false allegations that it had been stolen.

“We cannot be taken by surprise again,” Tom Manger, chief of the US Capitol police, has said, referring to how police four years ago were outnumbered and overwhelmed by the rampaging mob.

Members of Congress and senators were forced to seek shelter as rioters ransacked offices and searched for leading congressional members, including the then House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

Harris’s predecessor as vice-president, Mike Pence – charged with the same constitutional role of presiding over the certification – was spirited from the building by security personnel as rioters chanted “hang Mike Pence” after he refused to comply with Trump’s demand that he decline to accept the result and instead throw the election his way.

In reality, a rerun of four years ago is highly unlikely. Democrats have accepted Trump’s electoral college and popular vote victory without demur. They have signalled that they will not even lodge symbolic challenges to his electors, as some of them did after his 2016 victory, which he gained through the electoral college system while losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

This time, Trump won both the electoral college, by 312 to 226, as well as the popular vote, by a margin of about 2.5m.

“I think you’re going to have a pretty sort of normal transfer, and I think we will respect the wishes of the American people … in contrast to what happened January 6, 2021,” Joe Morelle, a representative from New York who is the ranking Democrat on the House committee charged with overseeing elections, told Politico. “I do feel like that’s worth saying over and over again.”

More than 1,500 people have been charged with offences in relation to the 2021 attack, which resulted in five deaths on the day and a further four in the days and months that followed, including police officers who killed themselves.

About 1,000 participants have been convicted but Trump has promised to pardon those he deems innocent as soon as he takes office on 20 January.