Republicans silent and Democrats incensed on fifth anniversary of US Capitol attack

Congressional Republicans were largely silent on the fifth anniversary of the January 6 insurrection on Tuesday, even as Democrats sought to use the occasion to blast Donald Trump and a small group of protesters convened on the grounds of the US Capitol in solidarity with those who carried out the attack.

Democrats, who are in the minority in Congress after fruitlessly hoping that the well-documented violence would cause voters to reject Trump for good, seized on the anniversary to decry the president as a threat to democracy, and accuse Republicans of acting as his accomplices.

“Instead of holding those responsible for the attack accountable, Donald Trump and far-right extremists in Congress have repeatedly attempted to rewrite history and whitewash the horrific events of January 6. We will not let that happen,” the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said at an unofficial hearing his party convened to examine the impacts of the attack.

The anniversary was the first since Trump returned to office nearly a year ago and immediately pardoned almost everyone convicted or charged over the violence, the crowning achievement of a campaign that Republicans began almost immediately in the attack’s aftermath to blunt public outrage.

Noting that some of the roughly 1,500 people whom the president pardoned were convicted of other serious offenses before and after January 6, Jeffries said: “It’s been a Trump-inspired crime spree. Why won’t Republicans in Congress condemn this dangerous behavior and ongoing threat to public safety?”

Though the attack sent lawmakers from both parties fleeing when rioters breached the Capitol during the joint session of Congress that certified Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, few Republicans noted the anniversary. Those who did downplayed its severity, or sought to steer blame towards the Democrats.

“On this day in history in 2021, thousands of peaceful grandmothers and others gathered in Washington DC to take a self-guided, albeit unauthorized, tour of the US Capitol building,” Republican congressman Mike Collins wrote on X.

He went on to inaccurately claim that the president’s “supporters walked to the Capitol to exercise their First Amendment right about the irregularities of the 2020 election. During this time, some individuals entered the Capitol, took photos, and explored the building before leaving.”

Trump made no public comments about the anniversary, and his top officials sought to push his administration’s message that the president deserves no blame for the violence. “Never forget the lies Democrats and the media tried to force upon the American people,” the White House communications director, Steven Cheung, wrote on X. He unveiled a website that offered a distorted timeline of the day’s events. Cheung later described the website as a “trap” that news outlets fell for.

Pardoned January 6 rioters and their supporters gather in front of the White House on 6 January 2026. Photograph: Aaron Schwartz/EPA

The insurrection has been linked to nine deaths as well as dozens of injuries, and it was extensively documented in videos shot by journalists, police and the rioters themselves. A bipartisan congressional committee that investigated the attack determined that Trump should face charges for his involvement, saying lawmakers “developed significant evidence that President Trump intended to disrupt the peaceful transition of power under our constitution.”

In his testimony on Tuesday before the Democratic-convened hearing, former US Capitol police officer Winston Pingeon described being attacked by rioters who said: “President Trump sent us.”

“Pardoning criminals who severely beat me and my fellow officers that day is completely unacceptable. We cannot accept violent felons being pardoned and released back into our neighborhoods without consequence. That is not justice,” Pingeon said.

Pam Hemphill, a rioter who refused her pardon, said she had appeared at the hearing to “make amends”.

“Accepting that pardon would be lying about what happened on January the sixth. I am guilty, and I own that guilt,” she said, adding that she had “fallen for the president’s lies, just like many of his supporters”.

The occasion reinvigorated controversy over a plaque that Congress has required by law be installed at the Capitol in honor of the officers who responded to the attack, but which the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, has yet to install.

“They have a legal requirement to put it up, and I call on Speaker Johnson to put it up today. It’s gathering dust in a closet somewhere,” said Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin.

In a speech on the Senate floor, Thom Tillis, a Republican senator who is not seeking re-election after clashing with Trump, simultaneously criticized Democrats for creating “an attitude around here that law enforcement is bad” with their support of the racial justice protests that broke out in 2020 following George Floyd’s death.

But he also criticized Trump’s pardons, saying: “We let bad people go, and we sent the message that if you come to this Capitol and you’ve got the right president in office, he’s going to let you get past things … that not any one of us would get away with if we did it back in our home state.”

In the afternoon, several dozen protesters, some of whom wore shirts and hats indicating they had received pardons, marched from the White House ellipse, where Trump delivered his speech five years ago, to the Capitol. They were halted short of its grounds by a line of police officers, but a smaller group was later allowed to go to its west front to place flowers in honor of Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who was fatally shot by a Capitol police officer as she attempted to breach a barricaded door during the insurrection.

Last year, the Trump administration agreed to a nearly $5m payout to her family, and to give Babbitt, an air force and air national guard vet, military honors.

Democratic congressman Tom Suozzi briefly confronted the protesters, who hurled insults at him as he asked, “How do you feel about tasing a police officer? How do you feel about committing crimes?”

“Oh, we didn’t commit no crimes,” a protester yelled back.

In an interview, Enrique Tarrio, the former national leader of the far-right Proud Boys group who was convicted of charges related to the attack on the Capitol and then pardoned by Trump, said he expected such marches would take place every January 6.

“I think now people get to see both sides of the coin, and they get to make an informed decision based on that,” he said.