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On January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., was attacked by a mob of supporters of then-U.S. president Donald Trump, two months after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. They sought to keep Trump in power by occupying the Capitol and preventing a joint session of Congress counting the Electoral College votes to formalize the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. The attack was ultimately unsuccessful in preventing the certification of the election results. According to the bipartisan House select committee that investigated the incident, the attack was the culmination of a seven-part plan by Trump to overturn the election. Within 36 hours, five people died: one was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three died of natural causes, including a police officer. Many people were injured, including 174 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months. Damages caused by attackers exceeded $2.7 million. Encouraged by Trump, on January 5 and 6 thousands of his supporters gathered in Washington, D.C., to support his false claims that the 2020 election had been "stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats" and to demand that then-Vice President Mike Pence and Congress reject Biden's victory. Starting at noon on January 6, at a "Save America" rally on the Ellipse, Trump gave a speech in which he repeated false claims of election irregularities and said, "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." As Congress began the electoral vote count, thousands of attendees, some armed, walked to the Capitol, with hundreds breaching police perimeters. Among the rioters were leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia groups, who conspired to use violence and interfere with the peaceful transfer of power. More than 2,000 rioters entered the building, with many vandalizing and looting, including the offices of then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Congress members. Rioters also assaulted Capitol Police officers and reporters, and attempted to capture and harm lawmakers. A gallows was erected west of the Capitol, with rioters chanting to "Hang Mike Pence" after he rejected requests, from Trump and others, to use his authority to overturn the election results. With building security breached, Capitol Police evacuated and locked down both chambers of Congress and several buildings in the Complex. Rioters occupied the empty Senate chamber while federal law enforcement officers defended the evacuated House floor. Pipe bombs were found at both the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters, and Molotov cocktails were discovered in a vehicle near the Capitol. Trump resisted sending the National Guard to quell the mob. Later that afternoon, in a Twitter video, he reasserted the inaccurate claim that the election was "fraudulent", and told his supporters to "go home in peace". The Capitol was cleared of rioters by mid-evening, and the electoral vote count was resumed and completed by the early morning of January 7. Pence declared President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris victorious. Pressured by his cabinet, the threat of removal, and many resignations, Trump later conceded to an orderly transition of power in a televised statement. A week after the attack, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection, making him the only U.S. president to be impeached twice. In February, after Trump had left office, the Senate voted 57–43 in favor of conviction, but fell short of the required two-thirds, resulting in his acquittal. Senate Republicans blocked a bill to create a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the attack, so the House instead approved a select investigation committee consisting of seven Democrats and two Republicans. They held nine televised public hearings on the attack, voted to subpoena Trump, and recommended that the Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecute Trump. On August 1, 2023, following a special counsel investigation, Trump was indicted on four charges. More than 1,200 people have been charged with federal crimes relating to the attack. As of December 2023, 728 defendants had pleaded guilty, while another 166 defendants were convicted at trial; a total of 745 defendants have been sentenced. Many participants in the attack were linked to far-right extremist groups or conspiratorial movements, including the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters. Numerous plotters were convicted of seditious conspiracy, including Oath Keepers and Proud Boys members; the longest sentence to date was given to then-Proud Boy chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Background Attempts to overturn the presidential election Joe Biden, of the Democratic Party, defeated incumbent Republican Party president Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Trump and other Republicans attempted to overturn the election, falsely claiming widespread voter fraud. Within hours after the closing of the polls, while votes were still being tabulated, Trump declared victory, demanding that further counting be halted. He began a campaign to subvert the election, through legal challenges and an extralegal effort. Ten days after the election, Trump's attorneys came to the conclusion that there was neither a factual foundation nor a valid legal argument for challenging the election results. Despite those analyses, Trump sought to overturn the results by filing at least sixty lawsuits, including two that came before the Supreme Court. Those actions sought to nullify election certifications and to void votes that had been cast for Biden. Those challenges were all rejected by the courts, for lack of evidence or the absence of legal standing. Trump's legal team, led by Sidney Powell, filed those lawsuits while knowing they had no factual basis or legal merit. In August 2021, Powell and other Trump attorneys were formally sanctioned for participating in "a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process... by filing baseless and frivolous lawsuits in order to undermine public confidence in the democratic process". Trump then mounted a campaign to pressure Republican governors, secretaries of state, and state legislatures to nullify results by replacing slates of Biden electors with slates pledged to Trump, or by manufacturing evidence of fraud; Trump's role in the plot to use fake electors led to his being prosecuted in Michigan, Georgia, and in federal court. He further demanded that lawmakers investigate ostensible election "irregularities", such as by conducting signature matches of mailed-in ballots, disregarding any prior analytic efforts. Trump also personally made inquiries regarding the possibility of invoking martial law to "re-run" or reverse the election and appointing a special counsel to find instances of fraud, despite con.... Discover the Bethany Annear popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Bethany Annear books.