Congress certified President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election on Monday, four years to the day after Trump’s supporters rioted inside the U.S. Capitol to protest his defeat in the 2020 election.
Harris, who accepted her loss on the day after the Nov. 5 election, presided over the joint session of the House and Senate. She maintained a neutral expression as her announcement of the final tally of Electoral College votes — 312 for Trump, 226 for Harris — drew cheers from Republicans in the House chamber.
The roughly 30-minute event to confirm Trump’s return to power unfolded as a tidy, solemn ceremony, once again resembling its traditional role as an uncontroversial formality in the presidential transition process. But the echoes of the deadly riot still reverberate through Capitol Hill, as Democrats and Republicans continue to scuffle over which history of Jan. 6, 2021, will endure.
“I do believe very strongly that America’s democracy is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it,” Harris told reporters after the election was certified.
“Today, America’s democracy stood,” she said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., set the tone in remarks on the floor of his chamber earlier Monday, calling the Capitol riot “one of the most shameful, reprehensible episodes in the history of this great nation.”
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris reacts as she uses the gavel next to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) during a joint session of Congress to certify Donald Trump’s election, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. January 6, 2025. R
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
He warned of the dangers of “election denialism” and decried those trying to “whitewash” the events of the riot, while scorning Trump’s possible pardons for those who participated in it.
After the 2020 election, Trump falsely denied President Joe Biden’s victory and urged then-Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over the certification, to reject electoral votes as Congress met on Jan. 6, 2021.
Harris, who presided over Monday’s proceedings, has not challenged the election outcome or spread false conspiracy theories to undermine confidence in the results, as Trump did.
Nor have Harris and her allies pursued a flurry of legal actions to try to overturn the election outcome, as Trump and his allies did.
Democrats also did not raise objections to the electoral results during the certification proceedings Monday, as some Republican senators and a majority of GOP House members did in 2021.
Harris, in a recorded video obtained first by NBC News, said her role is a “sacred obligation” and that she is “guided by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution and my unwavering faith in the American people.”
But while the process may be reverting to its pre-riot roots, the scars left from 2021 can still be seen.
The Capitol complex was under heavy security as lawmakers met to certify the election. The Homeland Security Department in September designated Monday’s vote a “National Special Security Event,” its first such designation for an electoral vote certification, prompting law enforcement at all levels to enact a comprehensive security plan around the Capitol.
The certification events also took place while hundreds of people are in jail for their involvement in the 2021 riot. The Justice Department’s efforts to investigate and prosecute rioters — the largest such probe in U.S. history — have yielded charges against more than 1,580 defendants and convictions for about 1,270 of them.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Monday morning that DOJ prosecutors “have sought to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy with unrelenting integrity.”
Trump, who was impeached for a second time for inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol, has vowed to pardon its participants — possibly including those who assaulted police officers, though he said there “may be some exceptions.”
Schumer, in his remarks Monday, said it is “shamefully, utterly outrageous” that Trump is considering pardons for the rioters.
To do so “would send a dangerous message to the country and the world” and “would be an insult to the memories of those who died” in connection with the riot, he said.