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 an attempt 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.
In an op-ed published by the Washington Post on Sunday, Biden implored Americans to remember the painful lessons learned in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
“We should be proud that our democracy withstood this assault. And we should be glad we will not see such a shameful attack again this year,” Biden wrote. “But we should not forget. We must remember the wisdom of the adage that any nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it. We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago.”
To prevent any potential disruption on Monday, the US Capitol police has taken additional precautions, including the deployment of new equipment and more staff, to ensure a smooth certification process.
“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.
In 2021, 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.
A rerun of four years ago is highly unlikely on Monday, however. 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.
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“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.
Trump has promised to issue presidential pardons to some of the January 6 attackers beginning in the “first hour” of his second term, which will start later this month, but Manger has warned that such a decision could jeopardize the safety of all US law enforcement officers.
“What message does that send?” Manger told the Washington Post on Sunday. “What message does that send to police officers across this nation, if someone doesn’t think that a conviction for an assault or worse against a police officer is something that should be upheld, given what we ask police officers to do every day?”