WASHINGTON – No one expects an angry mob to show up this time.
Four years to the day that supporters of Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol and tried to halt the certification of the 2020 election , Congress will usher in a new Trump era on Monday when it gathers to count each state’s electoral votes and officially declare him the winner of last year’s presidential contest.
This time, the proceeding is expected to go off smoothly. No rioters storming the Capitol. No one pushing past police barricades and beating officers with makeshift weapons. No lawmakers running through the Capitol’s corridors in fear of their lives. No sitting president pressuring a vice president to thwart the process.
“I think it will almost be a nonevent,” predicted Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
The difference between then and now is Trump.
Four years ago, the Republican refused to acknowledge he lost to Democrat Joe Biden, claiming the 2020 election was tainted by widespread fraud.
On Jan.6, 2021, the day Congress was to certify the results of that election, Trump held a rally on the Ellipse with the White House in the background and urged thousands of his supporters to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and “fight like hell.” They did, setting in motion the most violent attack against the seat of government since the War of 1812 .
But Trump eagerly embraced the results of last year’s election after He won both the popular vote and the Electoral College over the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris . Though Trump had again warned of the possibility of election fraud, he went suddenly silent about those dire predictions after his victory.
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Congressional Democrats are not expected to challenge the election results when they gather to certify them on Monday.
“I think it’s safe to say that even the Democrats heard from the American people that this is what they wanted,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.
Even so, hanging over the certification process will be unsettling memories of the assault on the Capitol, uncertainty over whether Trump will follow through on his promise to pardon those involved and questions of how the Jan. 6, 2021 attack will be viewed through the broader lens of history.
“For a significant chunk of the population, including me, it will be remembered as a frightening attempt to use force to overrule the results of a presidential election,” said Alexander Keyssar, a Harvard professor who taught a class on the Jan. 6 attacks.
For a different segment of the population, “it may be remembered as a day of courage and heroism,” Keyssar said.
Will Trump issue Jan. 6 pardons?
Either way, Trump, who was impeached twice during his first term, will immediately earn a couple of places in the history books when he begins his second term on Jan. 20. He will be the first president since Grover Cleveland to leave office in defeat and return four years later. He also will become the first president to enter office with a criminal record after his conviction in New York last May on 34 felonies involving hush-money payments to a porn star.
Trump was indicted on federal charges tied to his mishandling of classified documents after he left office and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election leading up to the attack on the Capitol. But three weeks after last year’s election, a judge acting on the request of special counsel Jack Smith dismissed the charges that Trump tried to steal the election in 2020. Smith also effectively ended the classified documents case by dropping his appeal of a separate judge’s dismissal of those charges.
Federal prosecutors did win the conviction of more than 1,000 people who were involved in the Jan. 6 attack. At least 645 were jailed and another 145 were serving home detention as of Dec. 6, according to the Justice Department.
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