Trump’s election victory over Harris confirmed by Congress on January 6

Congress confirmed President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election on Monday, four years after Trump’s supporters rioted inside the US Capitol to protest his defeat in the 2020 election.

Harris, who accepted his loss the day after the Nov. 5 election, presided over the joint session House and Senate. She maintained a neutral expression as her announcement of the final Electoral College vote tally — 312 for Trump, 226 for Harris — drew cheers from House Republicans.

The roughly 30-minute event to confirm Trump’s return to power unfolded as a tidy, solemn ceremony that again resembled 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 argue over which story on January 6, 2021 will endure.

It was “one of the most shameful, reprehensible episodes in the history of this great nation,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the floor of his chamber earlier Monday.

He warned of the dangers of “choice denial” and scorned those who tried to “whitewash” the events of the riot, while mocking Trump’s possible pardons for those who participated in it.

After the 2020 election, Trump falsely denied President Joe Biden’s victory and called on then-Vice President Mike Pence, who chaired the certification, to reject electoral votes when Congress convened on January 6, 2021.

Harris, who is leading Monday’s proceedings, has not disputed the election results 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 results, as Trump and his allies did.

Neither are Democrats raise objections to the election results during the certification process itself, as some Republican senators and a majority of GOP House members did in 2021.

Harris, in a recorded video first obtained by NBC Newssaid 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 returning to its pre-riot roots, the scars left over from 2021 can still be seen.

The Capitol complex was under heavy security when lawmakers met to confirm the election. The Home Guard 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 adopt a comprehensive security plan around the Capitol.

The certification events also take place while hundreds of people are in prison for their involvement in the 2021 riots. The Justice Department’s efforts to investigate and prosecute rioters — the largest such investigation in American history — have resulted in indictments against more than 1,580 defendants and convictions for about 1,270 of them.

The Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Monday morning that DOJ prosecutors “have sought to hold the criminals responsible for the Jan. 6 attack on our democracy with unflinching integrity to account.”

Trump, impeached for a second time for inciting the mob that attacked the Capitol, has vowed to apologize to its participants — possibly including those who assaulted police officers, though he said there “may be some exceptions.”

Schumer said in remarks Monday that it is “shameful, absolutely outrageous” that Trump is considering pardoning the rioters.

Doing 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 the riots, he said.