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(Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)

Before

During

After

Threats and disinformation spread across the country in the wake of the Capitol siege, shaking the underpinnings of American democracy.

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On the day after, the right side of Capt. Carneysha Mendoza Capt. Carneysha Mendoza Close A 19-year veteran of the Capitol Police, Mendoza led officers battling rioters in the Rotunda of the Capitol on Jan. 6. 's face burned painfully where pepper spray and other chemicals had seeped into her pores. She could still picture the enraged faces of those who had attacked her and her colleagues under the Capitol dome. Some had worn fatigues like the ones Mendoza donned as an Army soldier stationed at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

That day, the United States had weathered a faceless attack orchestrated covertly from beyond the country's borders. This time, Mendoza had faced a very different enemy: fellow Americans, many of them wrapped in red, white and blue, inflamed by a sitting president.

Mendoza waited in her office at the headquarters of the U.S. Capitol Police for news she did not want to hear. Capitol Police bike patrol officer Brian D. Sicknick, who had collapsed hours after responding to the riot, lay in critical condition at George Washington University Hospital. The 42-year-old had suffered two strokes, destroying the tissue at the back of his brain.

Capt. Carneysha Mendoza drives to the Capitol on Sept. 9. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Just after 9:30 p.m., the call came. Sicknick had gone into cardiac arrest. He was gone. Mendoza rounded up other officers and headed to the hospital.

As they arrived, Sandra Garza, Sicknick's partner of 11 years, stood alone in a room with his body, saying goodbye. A blanket covered him up to his chest. Garza touched his hand. It was already cold. She moved her fingers up his arm, where it seemed warmer, and let her hand linger.
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Near midnight, when it was time to remove Sicknick's body, Mendoza and her fellow officers lined a hallway leading to a rear loading dock. They saluted as he rolled past, toward a van that would take him to the medical examiner's office. Mendoza ordered the convoy first to drive by the Capitol.

Clint Hickman, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, voted to certify Joe Biden's win in the Arizona county. In June 2020, he had greeted President Donald Trump when he visited Phoenix. (Erin Patrick O'Connor and Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post; Caitlin O'Hara for The Washington Post; Shealah Craighead/White House)

Two thousand miles away, in the western suburbs of Phoenix, Clint Hickman Clint Hickman Close As chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in 2020, the longtime Republican resisted Trump's efforts to overturn the election results. woke up late on Jan. 7 in a house that was not his own.

After a grueling year as chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the Republican had eagerly handed off his gavel at a long-planned ceremony on the morning of Jan. 6, only to arrive home to find two sheriff's deputies waiting in an unmarked car in his driveway.

Their tone was urgent: You shouldn't be home tonight, one said.

"It's not that bad," Hickman responded. As chairman, he had faced threats and a large protest outside his home after he and the board had certified Joe Biden's win in the countyin late November.

Republican efforts to undermine the 2020 election restarted immediately after the Capitol attack

False election claims by Trump that spurred the Capitol attack have become a driving force in the Republican Party

Trump's attacks have led to escalating threats of violence

First responders are struggling with deep trauma

The deputy asked whether he had been listening to the news. There are massive protests in Washington, the deputy said. They've broken into the Capitol.

Hickman had to see for himself. Following his wife into the house, he looked at the scenes on the television and blanched. If President Donald Trump's supporters were willing to attack the Capitol, who knows what they might do on a residential street in Phoenix. He and his wife rounded up their three children and relocated to a relative's house, where he stayed up late, watching until Congress confirmed Biden's victory.

Morning had come, and Maricopa County was quiet. Hickman was unsure if the threat had passed. He called his family farm. He wouldn't be coming in to work today.

As their flight began its descent toward Denver on the night of Jan. 7, Salud Carbajal and Joe Neguse were on edge.

In nearly every seat, in every row, it seemed to the two Democratic congressmen, the other passengers were decked out in pro-Trump clothing. We're surrounded by insurrectionists, Carbajal thought.

As the lawmakers headed back from Washington to their districts - Carbajal to the central California coast and Neguse to Boulder - they wore casual clothes, masks and winter coats. They did not display their congressional lapel pins, though they stood out from their mostly White fellow passengers in other ways: Carbajal had emigrated from Mexico as a child, and Neguse is the son of Eritrean immigrants.

The atmosphere on the plane was charged. Then a chant began, a few voices at first.

"F--- Biden! F--- Biden!"

Louder and louder it grew, as others joined in. The lawmakers sat stunned.

"F--- Biden!"

"F--- BIDEN!"

The plane touched down. As Carbajal waited for his connecting flight to California and checked his phone, his dismay turned to fury: Officer Sicknick was dead.

A day after the insurrection, Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.) found himself on a flight full of Trump supporters leaving Washington. (Karla Gachet for The Washington Post)

The violent insurrection aimed at thwarting the democratic transfer of presidential power quickly became known by its date: Jan. 6. But the forces that drove Trump's supporters into the halls of the Capitol did not fade after that day.

Many of those who took part in the deadly attack returned home undeterred, still convinced Trump's lies about the election were true. In the coming months, his supporters would push for new examinations of the results and demand more restrictivevoting laws in the name of ballot security. Election officials around the country would receive hundreds of menacing emails and calls after Jan. 6, a Washington Post investigation found.
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Listen to threats collected by The Post

Warning: This audio clip contains profanities and explicit language.
Play (1:05)
Trump declined to address The Post's findings about the spread of violent rhetoric. Instead, spokesman Taylor Budowich accused the media of failing to examine the 2020 election, leaving it "up to the people to seek the truth."

After Jan. 6, Trump would emerge emboldened, bluntly threatening those who did not share his obsession with last year's vote and positioning himself to retake the White House in 2024.

Most ominously, a deep distrust in the voting process would spread across the country, supplanting a long-standing acceptance of election results. That shift would shake the foundation on which the American experiment was built - the shared belief that the nation's leaders are freely and fairly elected.

American democracy had held on Jan. 6. But the events that followed showed that day would not be the last test.
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After Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick died, flags at the Capitol flew at half-staff, and his remains lay in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. (Al Drago/Bloomberg News; Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

One day after

As his bus trundled south toward Florida on Jan. 7, Paul Hodgkins Paul Hodgkins Close The 38-year-old crane operator from Tampa traveled to Washington to show his support for Trump after absorbing false claims that the election was rigged - a decision that would drastically upend his life. felt uneasy.

The crane operator, then 38, had followed the mob into the Capitol and ended up in the well of the Senate, holding his Trump flag next to the desk where Vice President Mike Pence had been sitting just 40 minutes earlier. What felt like a strange dream in that moment had started to curdle into something far darker almost immediately. Emerging from the building, Hodgkins had seen people brawling and had learned that a woman had been shot.

Some of his bus mates clung to the hope that Trump would somehow remain president.

Hodgkins was skeptical. "I don't see how that's possible," he recalled thinking. "We're all going to have to eat the depression that he's going to be leaving office."

Word spread on the bus that Hodgkins had gone inside the Capitol. A couple of women asked him to share his experience, but he demurred.

By the time Douglas Jensen returned to Iowa, viewers around the globe had watched a video clip of the 41-year-old construction worker in a QAnon T-shirt chasing Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman up a marble staircase outside the Senate chamber. Jensen's wife had seen the news, too. Facing her displeasure, Jensen went to the Des Moines Police Department early on Jan. 8 and sat for an hours-long interview with two FBI agents.

Jensen told the agents he had not planned to go to the Capitol that day, but he went at Trump's direction. He said he had wanted to witness the arrests of the vice president and members of Congress. He said he was a patriot. Although Jan. 6 did not end the way he had hoped, he believed that Pence and members of Congress still might be arrested on Inauguration Day. But he also hinted at his own doubt, askingthe government agents conducting the interview whether he had been duped: "Can you guys let me in on that, if you know if these arrests are real?"

Paul Hodgkins, front, stands in the well of the Senate. (Capitol Police/Associated Press)

Douglas Jensen confronts a Capitol Police officer. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)

LEFT: Paul Hodgkins, front, stands in the well of the Senate. (Capitol Police/Associated Press) RIGHT: Douglas Jensen confronts a Capitol Police officer. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press)

Some rioters exhibited a flash of remorse after the insurrection, but others remained in Trump's thrall. Even as his supporters faced the consequences of their actions, they echoed the president's never-ending false claims and came up with their own spurious theories about stolen ballots that they shared in their communities.

A day after the Capitol attack, a Longview, Tex., real estate agent named Ryan Nichols took to Facebook to clear up a rumor. In a video taken at the Capitol, he had bragged that he was taking part in a "second revolution." Now he wanted people to know that it had been Trump supporters, not anti-fascist agitators, behind the violence.

With his time in the White House dwindling, Trump barreled forward - looking to channel his supporters' fears toward a new cause. The president condemned the "heinous" violence at the Capitol in a Jan. 7 video. But in the same message, he issued a directive to his base and elected representatives.

"I continue to strongly believe that we must reform our election laws to verify the identity and eligibility of all voters and to ensure faith and confidence in all future elections," Trump said.

"I want to thank you for your work Wednesday and Thursday during the joint session of Congress and express my sincere gratitude for carrying the boxes of electoral votes out of the Senate chamber when rioters stormed the Capitol," the vice president wrote. "Your quick thinking and rapid response, ensuring the ballots were secured and work of Congress could continue, are testaments to your character and commitment."

Pence sent similar missives to the House parliamentarian and the Senate chaplain, Barry Black. At the vice president's request, Black had delivered a closing prayer just before 4 a.m. on Jan. 7, after Congress had reconvened and certified Biden's victory. Pence signed all the letters by hand and arranged for their delivery by mail.

After an initial burst of bipartisan horror at the Capitol riot, many Republican officials fell back in line with Trump.

Other Republicans' condemnation faded quickly, too. Six days after Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) denounced Trump on the Senate floor, he accepted a ride with the president on Air Force One for an appearance along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who had blamed Trump's "crescendo of conspiracy theories" for the Capitol attack, quickly came out against the impeachment proceedings that Democrats were already seeking.

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"80% of Trump voters and 76% of Republicans are less likely to vote for a member of Congress who votes for impeachment."
Pollster John McLaughlin

"We got to everyone," said a Trump aide. "We got McConnell, we got to McCarthy."

The message: If you vote for impeachment, "you're screwed."

Trump supporters who gathered at the Arizona Capitol on Jan. 6 watch a live stream of the president's speech in Washington. (Photos by Caitlin O'Hara for The Washington Post)

Six days after

Six days after the insurrection, Trump's election lies bloomed anew in Phoenix. Republicans in the Arizona Senate subpoenaed Maricopa County, demanding that it turn over its nearly 2.1 million paper ballots, which had been packed up in cardboard boxes and stored away in a facility known as the Vault.

Trump had narrowly lost the state, thanks largely to Biden's 45,000-vote margin in the county, home to Phoenix and more than 60 percent of Arizonans. A hand recount of a sampling of ballots had confirmed the accuracy of Biden's victory. State and federal judges had rejected lawsuits challenging the results. In December, a state judge had knocked down a previous effort by the Senate to obtain ballot images and tabulating machines from Maricopa, saying the subpoena was improperly filed.

The Republican senators were undeterred.

Their new push surprised Stephen Richer, the recently elected Maricopa County recorder, whose responsibilities included leading the county's elections office.

Richer, a Republican, had no reason to doubt the election tallies that had resulted in his own come-from-behind win in November. He had been trailing on election night, but after days of counting - marked at one point with a tweet from Trump to "STOP THE COUNT" - he had overtaken the Democratic incumbent.

The Senate was in charge, they explained, and they would lead a new top-to-bottom review of the election. The senators were treating him like a petulant child, Richer thought to himself. His hopes of soothing tempers evaporated.

No one mentioned the violence in Washington.

Jennifer Kelly, a county clerk, feeds her dogs at home in Houghton County, Mich., in September. (Fábio Erdos for The Washington Post)

Far to the north, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Houghton County Clerk Jennifer Kelly was also growing increasingly anxious.

For weeks, she had fielded complaints about Biden's narrow victory in the state, many from people she'd known all her life. Trump had won Houghton County by 14 points, but that did not stop them.

At first, they sent sharp questions - direct but polite - to her official courthouse email account. But in the weeks following the attack on the Capitol, the complaints grew more heated.

Residents began accosting Kelly on the street, in Walmart and at the grocery store, angrily complaining that pro-Biden forces had manipulated machines made by Dominion Voting Systems - repeating one of Trump's many unfounded claims. "You could feel their anger and disgust with an election they thought was corrupt," she said.

Although Trump had easily won Houghton County, he lost the state. Kelly was accosted by angry Michiganders who claimed the county's voting system had been manipulated. (Fábio Erdos for The Washington Post)

The county tried to head off concerns by inviting Kurt Knowles, a representative of a Dominion subcontractor, to answer questions at a public meeting. On Jan. 12, Knowles appeared by Zoom and faced a barrage of queries about right-wing reports that machines in Houghton and nearby Keweenaw County had been manipulated to switch votes from Trump to Biden.

Seated at a long wooden table next to the county's five commissioners, Kelly hoped the detailed explanation from a knowledgeable outsider might finally subdue the suspicions.

It didn't - not that day, and not even after Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20.

A week after the insurrection, the House of Representatives impeached Trump. The article of impeachment was carried in a procession to the Senate, where the president would be acquitted. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post; Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)

29 days after

As the Georgia General Assembly prepared to convene a new session, Republican lawmakers found themselves inundated.

In emails and phone calls and in person, their friends and neighbors demanded new laws to stop the kind of fraud that Trump had convinced his supporters had caused his defeat. It was fresh evidence that the base was strongly behind the former president.

Several senators told Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) that they had to pass new election laws,even as some acknowledged they did not buy Trump's claims of fraud.

"I get it that you think you're responding to what you think is the will of your constituents," responded Duncan, who presides over the state Senate. "But at the end of the day, you've got to be honest with them. When someone says the Earth is flat, you've got to vehemently disagree with them because you know it's not flat."

The hate mail and ugly phone calls poured in. One Trump supporter called from Massachusetts to tell Powell, "I know who you are and I know where you live because your address is public."

Colleagues urged Powell to report the call to state law enforcement. Instead, he called back. The man, a retired police detective, assured him that he didn't mean for his message to sound threatening. "I'll take you at your word," Powell replied.

Rep. Alan Powell (R) speaks in favor of a bill in the House chamber in Atlanta.

House Speaker David Ralston (R) listens during a debate on proposed voting measures. (Photos by Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP)

LEFT: Rep. Alan Powell (R) speaks in favor of a bill in the House chamber in Atlanta. RIGHT: House Speaker David Ralston (R) listens during a debate on proposed voting measures. (Photos by Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP)

The pressure was so great that House Speaker David Ralston (R) gave his blessing to House Republicans to submit any election bills they wanted, no matter how severe. Ultimately, dozens of Republican lawmakers submitted bills in the name of securing Georgia elections.

Yet there was a limit: GOP leaders were eager to please Trump but did not want to hurt Republican turnout. When his colleagues floated the idea of banning drop boxes, Ralston squashed the notion after internal polling showed that many GOP voters liked that method of turning in absentee ballots.

In hearings that kicked off in early February, Georgians claimed without evidence that thousands of noncitizens had voted in the election, that the chain of custody had been broken for thousands of absentee ballots in the Atlanta area, that the length of time it took election officials to complete the count - about a week - was evidence of fraud. Some poll watchers testified that they didn't trust the system not because they saw wrongdoing,but because they couldn't see everything that was happening.

"They could have been building a warship back there and I wouldn't have known the difference because you couldn't get close enough," said one woman, Ginger Bradshaw, a floral arranger from Fulton County, who described seeing "barricades" and "big blue shields" erected around workstations at the World Congress Center in Atlanta, where she had served as a poll watcher.

Duncan felt a wave of dread when the first major bill came to the Senate floor - a bill so restrictive that House leaders had already indicated it was unlikely to prevail on their side of the building.

He couldn't bear to preside over the Senate that day. Instead, he sat in his office and watched the debate on TV.

Legislators in Atlanta celebrate the end of the 2021 legislative session in March. (Brynn Anderson/AP)

41 days after

In the early morning of Feb. 16, more than half a dozen officers showed up at the door of Paul Hodgkins Paul Hodgkins Close The 38-year-old crane operator from Tampa traveled to Washington to show his support for Trump after absorbing false claims that the election was rigged - a decision that would drastically upend his life. 's Tampa home. Awakened by loud knocking, he grabbed a towel to put around his waist and opened the door.

"Hands!" yelled one agent, a hand on his gun holster. Hodgkins let the towel drop to the floor.

After an agent helped him into a pair of shorts, Hodgkins turned over his two phones, laptop, a tablet, the clothes he wore to the Capitol, the Trump flag, his backpack and the four guns he kept in his closet and truck. He was taken to the federal courthouse in Tampa, where he was released hours later on bond.

Hodgkins would be charged with five counts, including obstructing an official proceeding. The former Eagle Scout, who had never gotten in trouble with the law before, was mortified.

"People acted like children and destroyed a place because they didn't get what they wanted, and when I realized it had turned into that, I felt rotten," he said. "I didn't feel wrong for wanting an audit or for supporting Donald Trump, but I do feel remorse for crossing the line. I wish I had just stayed home."

Paul Hodgkins was charged with five counts for his actions on Jan. 6. (Edward Linsmier for The Washington Post)

After failing to anticipate the Jan. 6 attack, the FBI was now racing to track down the hundreds of people in the predominantly White crowd who had swarmed the Capitol that day and then walked out, unhindered.

"There was a bias," said one person familiar with the FBI's work before and after Jan. 6. "The bias was the belief that middle-aged, largely law-abiding people don't burn, loot or throw things at police officers. We underestimated the desperation, anger and conspiratorial nature of the crowd."

A senior FBI official said the bureau "strongly disagrees with this characterization. As our actions in the lead up to January 6 demonstrated, this was not business as usual. The FBI took the threats of violence seriously and responded accordingly."

Inside a sand-colored office building north of the Capitol that houses the FBI's Washington Field Office, the Jan. 6 investigation was turning into a round-the-clock job, seven days a week. Extra agents were brought on to help with the crushing workload - including an entire class of new graduates from the agency's academy in Quantico, Va. The "Blue Whale" - one of a handful of FBI mobile command centers crammed with additional surveillance and communications equipment - sat outside.

At first, the FBI could barely keep up with what agents and prosecutors called the "low-hanging fruit" - the perpetrators who gleefully posted recordings of themselves breaking the law. Each day, thousands of new tips poured in, and the agency routed them to field offices around the country. Many proved useless, but a small portion produced valuable information, matching names and social media accounts to blurry faces on video.

The FBI quickly built a digital intake system to handle the leads,much like thesystem used effectively after the mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert in 2017. Now that model faced its greatest test.

Cellphone data from around the Capitol complex proved to be a fruitful investigative trove. Agents quickly sifted out numbers that appeared regularly and were likely to be lawmakers, staffers and lobbyists, focusing instead on those that popped up only on Jan. 6. The result was hundreds more suspects to check against social media accounts, E-ZPass toll records and credit card receipts.

Federal investigators also turned their attention to another deep well of information: the threatening social media posts that analysts, academics and former national security officials had flagged in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6.

FBI agents wanted to share leads with the D.C. homeland security department, whose officials had sought to pass along online threats before the attack. Donell Harvin Donell Harvin Close As the head of intelligence at D.C.'s homeland security office, Harvin led a team that spotted warnings that extremists planned to descend on the Capitol and disrupt the electoral count. , the head of intelligence at D.C.'s homeland security office, who had invited the FBI to view material two days before Jan. 6, agreed to send two analysts to work full time with a federal task force identifying suspects.

In the first eight weeks of the investigation, federal authorities arrested hundreds of peopleon charges related to the Capitol attack.

The bureau also threw itself at one particularly ominous sequence of events from the day: the planting of pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic national committees' headquarters on Capitol Hill. At the outset of the investigation, some law enforcement officials suspected the bombs might have been planted as a means to draw critical resources away from the surging crowds; other investigators found that unlikely because the bombs were planted overnight and the bomber could not know when they would be discovered.

Capt. Carneysha Mendoza told a Senate committee that the Jan. 6 attack was "the worst of the worst" of her professional experiences. (Photos by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

48 days after

On the Hill, lawmakers pressed Capitol Police leaders to explain how the agency had so badly let down its guard. Acting chief Yogananda D. Pittman acknowledged that the department had not stationed enough officers around the building, lacked sufficient pepper balls and other crowd-control weapons, and had not followed lockdown protocols, leaving the Capitol and its occupants exposed to the marauding crowds.

Capt. Carneysha Mendoza Capt. Carneysha Mendoza Close A 19-year veteran of the Capitol Police, Mendoza led officers battling rioters in the Rotunda of the Capitol on Jan. 6. told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee how she had rushed to help officers, becoming trapped among rioters as she pushed her way into the Rotunda. At one point, her arm was pinned in a railing and nearly broken.

"Of the multitude of events I've worked in my nearly 19-year career on the department," she testified to a rapt committee in February, "this was by far the worst of the worst. We could have had 10 times the amount of people working with us, and I still believe this battle would have been just as devastating."

Mendoza was among the wounded. For weeks, she had tried to ignore the burns on her face, keeping a supply of fresh aloe leaves in her refrigerator to rub on her cheek for fleeting relief. But the pain worsened to the point that it awakened her in the night, so she finally visited the emergency room. Doctors diagnosed her with chemical burns and a skin infection.

She was prescribed antibiotics and was eventually on six medications, including one to break down and replace her top layer of skin. "I could feel my skin getting thinner when I put it on," Mendoza said. "The healing was sometimes the most painful part."

Protecting her son, Christian, then 10, presented an additional challenge. Mendoza initially had tried to keep the trauma of that day from him, leaving him with his uncle in the immediate weeks after Jan. 6 while she worked nonstop and struggled to sleep.

But after the hearing, Christian searched her name online and discovered her Senate testimony. "There's now like a million pictures of you, Mom," he said. And he mustered the courage to ask: "When are you getting a new job?"

Mendoza hadn't prepared for the moment. "Look, this is my job," she blurted out, before immediately regretting her words. "It pays the bills. What do you want, to be homeless?"

Mendoza, seen with relatives, struggled to keep the events of Jan. 6 from her son, all while facing a difficult physical recovery. (Photos by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

59 days after

Clint Hickman Clint Hickman Close As chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in 2020, the longtime Republican resisted Trump's efforts to overturn the election results. , the Maricopa County supervisor, could see the plume of smoke rising in the distance from 20 miles away, getting closer and closer as he sped west on Interstate 10 through the desert in his pickup truck in early March.

There had been fires before at his family's egg farm outside Phoenix since his grandmother founded it in 1944 - a natural risk of the dust and the massive wooden chicken barns. But even from the cab of his truck, he knew this blaze was going to be the worst in the family's history. The burning barn was packed with tens of thousands of hens.

All afternoon, firefighters fought the flames, which had started after a loader used to scrape chicken manure overheated. As Hickman worked to account for his employees, his phone was pinging with texts and calls from friends and colleagues. Along with messages of support, some posed an odd question: Had Hickman seen the Gateway Pundit story?

The headline on the right-wing website: "After Finding Shredded Ballots in the Dumpster Earlier Today - A Mysterious Fire Breaks Out at Maricopa County Official's Farm."

The innuendo-filled story claimed that Maricopa officials such as Hickman were scheming to hide 2020 presidential ballots before turning them over to the state Senate for an audit. "There better be a good investigation into these fires," the story concluded, questioning whether shredded ballots could have burned in the chicken coops.

Hickman was flabbergasted.

"It was our darkest day," he said. "And this was just jaw-dropping."

The blaze at the Hickman family's farm is seen on March 6. (Sharman Hickman)

The fire killed 165,000 hens. Even though officials quickly determined the cause and debunked the claim about shredded ballots, online speculation flourished. In one version, Hickman was said to have packed the barns with ballots and lit it on fire. Others theorized that he was about to blow the whistle on corrupt county colleagues and the fire was set to send him a message. In the strangest incarnation, Hickman was accused of grinding up ballots and mixing them in with the chicken feed - then setting the barn ablaze to cover up his misdeeds.

The angry emails and phone calls persisted for months.

I am not surprised that you and your fellow board members are continuing to thwart a transparent audit. Shredded ballots and now a fire? Good grief!! Now you are killing animals as well? We all know what you are up to and we are working to recall each one of you . I hope you are held fully accountable for committing treason against the country and betraying your fellow Americans. Shame on you!

Around the country, false theories about the election were percolating and simmering, growing ever more intricate as Trump's supporters traded claims in Facebook groups and Telegram channels. Some speculated that tabulating machines had been hacked - by the Chinese or the Iranians or the Venezuelans or hordes of communists. Others proposed that Democrats had somehow used the expansion of mail-in balloting that had accompanied the pandemic to flood the system with fake ballots for Biden.

All of the theories were rooted, ultimately, in an inability by die-hard Trump supporters to accept that millions of their fellow citizens had rejected the president. After imbibing Trump's dark warnings about "deep state" conspiracies for years, it seemed plausible to many that thousands of volunteers and public officials who administer the nation's elections had rigged the entire thing.

Gabriel Sterling, behind the desk, is chief operating officer for the Georgia secretary of state. He vociferously denounced those who helped the election fraud theories flourish. (Photos by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

Gabriel Sterling Gabriel Sterling Close A top official in the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) who warned that Trump's rhetoric could inspire violence. , a senior aide to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, even heard it from his own relatives.

A longtime Republican, Sterling had managed campaigns, worked for a GOP congressman in Washington and served on the Sandy Springs City Council in suburban Atlanta. He voted for Trump in 2016 and in 2020. But in the weeks after the election, amid the swirl of false claims of fraud in Georgia, he vocally denounced those promoting the unsubstantiated theories.

The public stance put him at odds with his conservative family. One relative peppered Sterling via Facebook messages.

"The fact that there were more votes than registered voters in the US will never be explained away," the relative wrote in February.

"There were not more votes than registered voters," Sterling replied.

He concluded: "C'mon Gabe! You believe that BS?"

Again, Sterling replied patiently. "Most of the charges are [coming from] people who aren't lying but don't understand what they are seeing," he wrote.

Trump supporters gathered in Phoenix and Lansing, Mich., earlier this year to protest the presidential election results. In Lansing, they brought lawmakers boxes of signed affidavits requesting an audit of the votes. (Courtney Pedroza for The Washington Post; Sarah Rice for The Washington Post; Sarah Rice for The Washington Post)

65 days after

As theories about the 2020 election results metastasized, numerous Republicans recast the Jan. 6 attack as peaceful, describing the rioters as patriots and political prisoners - tacitly sanctioning mob violence as an acceptable method of protest.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson (R) told a conservative radio host in March that he had never felt threatened because he knew "those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law." A few weeks later, Trump told Fox News's Laura Ingraham that the day had been a "lovefest," where people were "hugging and kissing" the police.

The FBI was arresting an average of fourJan. 6 suspects a day. The day after Trump's interview, a D.C. man was charged with striking police officers repeatedly with a long pole wrapped in red, white and blue. And a Texas man was arrested and accused of battling police with their own stolen shields, then lighting an object on fire and throwing it into a police line.

Some defendants were already signaling that they planned to blame their actions squarely on Trump.

"I went to Washington, D.C., because I believed that is what the President asked us to do," Nichols, the Texas real estate agent, wrote to a judge in an unsuccessful attempt to be let out on bail. Nichols and a friend had egged on other demonstrators and engaged in violent, destructive acts and assaults on Capitol Police officers, according to court documents.

To some judges, Trump's rhetoric was not an excuse for rioters' actions but rather an ongoing threat. His praise for the insurrectionists and his refusal to accept the election results could continue to radicalize his supporters, they warned.

"The steady drumbeat that inspired defendant to take up arms has not faded away," U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote, ordering one defendant remain jailed until trial. "The canard that the election was stolen is being repeated daily on major news outlets and from the corridors of power in state and federal government, not to mention in the near-daily fulminations of the former President."

Indeed, even among those facing prison time, Trump's ongoing pull was apparent.

Ronald "Ronnie" Sandlin of Tennessee, who allegedly plotted with two other men to bring weapons to the Capitol, had repeatedly told the judge that he regretted his actions. At one hearing, he could be heard weeping.

"Your honor, have mercy on me," Sandlin said. "Please."

But he conveyed a different message to friends and family.

"I'm in a cell block with all Capitol people," Sandlin texted his mother on March 30. "I'm proud to call them my friends we stood up for what we believed in and sacrificed."

The implications were already clear for those contending with the aftermath. Mendoza and another officer tried to console each other in an ongoing text thread, sharing their nightmares and fears, often late at night.

Just woke up...tried to sleep my pain of...smh. 3 bad dreams later and tge right side of my face still hurts. Started the antibiotics today...so hopefully that helps....I'm so over this.
March 6, 8:43 p.m.
Mendoza was working constantly, but when she occasionally had time for rest, she slept fitfully, plagued by a recurring dream that someone was breaking into her house.

I had a nightmare last night that we were in one of the buildings and CS gas was pouring in and we couldn't get out.
May 18, 10:59 p.m.

I woke up with my heart beating so fast I could barely catch my breath.
11 p.m.

Contractors working for Cyber Ninjas examine and recount Maricopa County presidential ballots in Phoenix in May. The firm, which had no election-auditing experience, was hired by the Arizona State Senate. (Photos by Courtney Pedroza for the Washington Post)

106 days after

Across the country, the pressure from Trump and his supporters was getting results.

In mid-April, more than 2 million Maricopa County ballots and hundreds of tabulating machines were taken to the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, a concrete former basketball arena in downtown Phoenix.

A state court had ordered the county to comply with the subpoena issued by the GOP-controlled state Senate, which was determined to review the ballots cast in the presidential race despite the lack of evidence of problems with the vote.

The company tapped to run the project: a little-known firm based in Sarasota, Fla., called Cyber Ninjas, which had no previous experience administering or auditing elections. Its chief executive, Doug Logan, had touted claims that the election was marred by fraud.

Problems emerged nearly from the start. The company offered little explanation of its procedures, including the UV lights that workers shined on every ballot at one point. One audit worker told a reporter the light was intended to help shoot down a claim that some ballots had been smuggled in from Asia and could be identified by bamboo fibers in the paper.

The pro-Trump media outfit One America News (OAN) streamed footage from the arena floor online 24 hours a day, breathlessly covering the process as the start of a national movement that would lead to a reconsideration of the election results. Host Christina Bobb, who served as a volunteer lawyer with the Trump campaign after the election and huddled with the president's attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani at a Washington hotel on Jan. 6, used airtime to raise private donations to help fund the ballot review.

The leaders of Maricopa County - nearly all Republicans - publicly denounced the recount process as a "sham" and a "spectacle." (Courtney Pedroza for the Washington Post)

Three months after the Capitol siege, Trump supporters had something to cling to.

"We need one state. They're all going to fall like dominoes," proclaimed Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow, who was spending millions of his own money on films and rallies promoting false claims about voter fraud.

The leaders of Maricopa County - nearly all Republicans - could not believe what they were seeing. The election had been strength-tested over and over again, and yet now their ballots were in the hands of amateurs with an agenda.

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"It is time to make a choice to defend the Constitution and the Republic ... We stand united together to defend the Constitution and the Republic in our opposition to the Big Lie. We ask everyone to join us in standing for the truth."
Maricopa County officials

A distressed Stephen Richer, who had largely remained silent because he had not been in office in 2020, joined the county's six other elected officials in a scathing public letter May 17 that denounced the process as a "sham" and a "spectacle that is harming all of us."

Two days later, Richer received a disturbing message on his cellphone:

Listen to threat to Maricopa Recorder Stephen Richer

Warning: This audio clip contains profanities and explicit language.
Play (0:21)
The spotlight on the Arizona recount was only growing, thanks in part to the former president.

"Incredible organization and integrity taking place in Arizona with respect to the Fraudulent 2020 Presidential Election," Trump said in one of two statements he issued about the recount on a single day in late April. "They were among the earliest to see that this was a Rigged Election!"

"You're our president!" a man yelled out in April as he walked through the lobby. "Thank you," Trump mouthed back.

At one dinner, Trump approached a table where the guests tried to engage him in small talk. But he was not interested, instead recounting in granular detail how he believed the vote was fraudulent in states such as Georgia and Arizona.

"Everyone is talking about the election," he told them. "It's the biggest story on earth."

On another night, an ally tried to engage Trump in a discussion for plans about a future presidential library. "He was totally uninterested," the person said. "And he just immediately launched into how the election was stolen."

With the Arizona review underway, Trump began discussing how to secure election reviews in other states, such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Georgia.

Perhaps, he told allies, he could soon be back in the White House.

Republicans from other states began making pilgrimages to Phoenix to tour the recount operation inside the coliseum. Though they were mostly backbencher lawmakers and candidates for office, OAN and other pro-Trump media outlets described them as official state delegations, suggesting to viewers that those states would soon follow Arizona's lead.

In public, Fann, the state Senate president, repeatedly said that no matter the recount's outcome, Biden's win in the state would not be overturned. But she did little to puncture the enthusiasm of those who believed the opposite, including members of her own caucus and Trump himself.

Houghton is in Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula. (Photos by Fábio Erdos for The Washington Post)

160 days after

Michigan state Sen. Ed McBroom, a conservative lawmaker with a deep religious faith, is known by his colleagues as "the king of the Upper Peninsula" - a nod to his popularity in this remote region of the state.

In June, officials in Houghton County turned to the fourth-generation dairy farmer for help, hoping to put to rest the rumors still circulating in their community of hacked voting machines and Trump votes that had been flipped to Biden.

A Lindell-produced film called "Absolute Proof" that aired on OAN had stirred up local residents with false claims that bad actors had used remote manipulation to switch 1,143 of the roughly 18,500 presidential votes cast in Houghton County for Biden. The film asserted it was all part of a broad plot to hack the election.

On June 15, McBroom appeared via Zoom at a county commissioners meeting and tried to tamp down concerns. The allegations, he said, were "made up."

"What keeps on being postulated is something that is just not possible," he said.

Some residents in the audience were not satisfied and demanded a fresh audit of the results. "What can be the harm? Let's settle this," said one speaker to scattered applause.

Eight days later, McBroom's Senate Oversight Committee released a report on the election - a withering 55-page dissection of unsubstantiated claims promoted by Trump and his allies. The conclusion: Citizens should be confident in the results of Michigan's election.

Hey Ed McBroom, what's it like to sell your soul and fill your pockets??? U r a piece of crap. Everyone knows y ur delaying the Michigan audit u p. o. s. Traitor TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR TRAITOR, bought man with a mouth full of Sorros dong. Loser of the year. You are going on a one way trip to Guantanamo bay as soon as the alliance grabs u...Hang by the neck until lifeless. U deserve it u loser.
Sept. 1, 12:55 p.m.
The blowback was immediate. A few local GOP committees around the state passed resolutions censuring McBroom. One activist called him "a servant Satan." Trump went after him personally, issuing a statement that claimed the report was a coverup and that McBroom was "really a Democrat." The former president said Michigan voters would "not stand for Republican senators not to act on the crime of the century."

McBroom received scores of angry calls, emails and text messages, some calling for him to be "strung up" or "shot."

Disheartened, McBroom tried to take the long view. My reputation and image are in the hands of God, he told himself.

Truth-tellers were no longer welcome in the GOP. Nor were those who saw the insurrectionists as anything other than patriots.

A local state senator received threats after a Senate committee rebuked the election fraud allegations. (Fábio Erdos for The Washington Post)

Trump loyalists had ousted Rep. Liz Cheney Rep. Liz Cheney Close The GOP congresswoman from Wyoming worked behind the scenes to make sure the Jan. 6 electoral count was not disrupted. Afterward, she paid a steep political price. (Wyo.), who had repeatedly denounced his "destructive lies," from her House leadership post. Republican lawmakers torpedoed an attempt to form a bipartisan commission to examine the forces and failures that led to the assault. And on June 15, 21 House Republicans voted against a measure to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Capitol Police officers who had fought off the rioters.

A few days later, angry conservatives booed Pence and chanted "Traitor!" at a Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Florida, an echo of the ominous shoutsinside the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Cheney - a conservative standard-bearer and daughter of a Republican vice president - defied GOP leadership and agreed to work with Democrats on a committee to investigate Jan. 6. One summer evening, she walked off the House floor and onto the Capitol steps, where she was greeted by one of her new and unlikely allies, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a fellow member of the committee.

A knot of students visiting from Miami University of Ohio were lingering nearby. A young woman approached Cheney. "I'm not sure that I agree with you on many things," she told the Republican congresswoman, but added that she wanted to join her new cause: "How can I fight alongside you?"

Rep. Liz Cheney was ousted from her Republican leadership post by members of her party after she denounced the president's "destructive lies." She then defied party leadership and agreed to work with Democrats on a committee to investigate Jan. 6. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post; Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post; Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post; Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

The fallout was particularly acute for the handful of GOP state officials who had stood by the election results, such as Raffensperger, Georgia's secretary of state.

Days before the state GOP convention was set to convene in early June, Gabriel Sterling Gabriel Sterling Close A top official in the office of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) who warned that Trump's rhetoric could inspire violence. , the Raffensperger aide, ran into a pro-Trump activist at a Young Republicans event in Atlanta, who asked whether he and his boss were planning to make the trip to the coast for the party gathering.

No, Sterling replied.

At the convention at Jekyll Island, the crowd warmly welcomed two rivals going for Raffensperger's job. U.S. Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), who voted against the electoral college count and had been talking to Trump regularly, showed up with boot-shaped "Boot Brad" pins. And David Belle Isle, the former mayor of Alpharetta, passed out fliers with an illustration of Raffensperger with devil horns.

"What happened in Georgia had a tremendous impact to the rest of the nation," Hice said at the convention, embracing the false claim that Trump won the state. "We're in the fight of our lives for this country. We are the tip of the spear in this battle."

The delegates voted to censure Raffensperger. And Brian Kemp - the GOP governor who formally certified Biden's win - was greeted with such loud boos that it was hard to hear him in some corners of the vast convention hall.

It didn't matter that Kemp had signed a sweeping elections bill months earlier in response to the demand from Trump supporters. The law was not as harsh as Duncan and others had feared it would be, but it stripped some powers from the secretary of state and gave the state elections board and lawmakers new sway over local election administration.

Other GOP-controlled states raced to pass their own voting bills, citing the need to bolster public faith in elections. Florida Republicans enacted one of the most far-reaching laws, dramatically restricting mail balloting, even though the GOP had revolutionized the use of that voting method in the state. Texas passed legislation that added new criminal penalties for election officials and curtailed voting methods used in 2020 in Houston, where a surge of Black voters had turned out.

Several state legislatures passed bills granting new powers to partisan actors to challenge ballot counting and making it easier for the party in power to replace local election officials. The measures seemed built for a future when rejecting election results could be routine - and raised the prospect that partisan loyalists, rather than county professionals, could become arbiters of election disputes.

It was an overwhelming signal of Trump's hold on the GOP.

Speaking in Phoenix in July, former president Donald Trump described the ballot reviews around the country as "a revolution." (Photos by Cassidy Araiza for The Washington Post)

199 days after

Inside the Arizona Federal Theatre in Phoenix on a Saturday in late July, Melissa Marsh, a landscape designer from Northern California, listened, rapt, as Trump championed the recount still underway in the state.

"The results will be so outrageous," Trump said, promising the ballot review would spur action elsewhere.

"Now it's turning out to be a revolution in this country," he added.

Marsh, 60, had followed the fraud allegations since election night, when she had learned of a false claim that multiple states where Trump was ahead had stopped counting at 10 p.m. She became mistrustful of Fox News that night after the network called Arizona for Biden. She now relied on Telegram and MyPillow's Lindell for information about the vote.

"Mike Lindell has shown through data scientists and facts and evidence of how the election is fraudulent, how the ballots are not matching up," she said, adding: "The media's fake. It lies."

Many of those in the audience were dubious that what had occurred in Washington amounted to an attack on a branch of the U.S. government.

"That's not an insurrection," he said. "There was no actual violence that took place except for one person that got shot at the hands of the people that were supposed to be there."

Sitting in the third row of the theater was Michelle Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt.

A Capitol Police officer had shot Babbitt as she tried to climb through a broken glass panel in the doorway leading to the Speaker's Lobby, yards away from the House chamber, where lawmakers were still evacuating.

Several weeks before the Phoenix rally, Trump had called Witthoeft to praise her daughter, and she had encouraged him to speak out more about her death. He took her advice, telling Fox News days later that Babbitt was an "innocent, wonderful, incredible woman, a military woman."

The Capitol Police would formally find that the officer who shot Babbitt may have saved lives through his actions. But Republicans followed Trump's lead. Rep. Paul A. Gosar of Arizona, who had claimed at a congressional hearing that Babbitt had been "executed," led a rousing ovation that night in Phoenix for Witthoeft. "Ashli! Ashli! Ashli!" the crowd chanted.

"You sold out the state of Georgia and your country. You are guilty of voter fraud. You need to confess your part in this fraud or be tried for treason. You will not be able to walk the streets in peace or will your family untill you tell the truth!"
Sent to Gabriel Sterling

A few days later, Sterling, the Georgia election official, received a letter in the mail.

You are a disgrace to this Country and I hope you have a fucking heart attack soon you traitor bitch! Fuck You and Fuck your entire traitor family.
In a perfect world, traitors are hung by their scrawny little necks until dead!
The note inside was written in cheerful, loopy penmanship, but its content was anything but upbeat:

Sterling wasn't alone.

In Maricopa County, the venomous and profanity-laced attacks had poured in for months. The emails and calls attacked the county officials as traitors and called for their execution by firing squad or public hanging. Some were laced with anti-Semitic slurs.

Listen to threat to Richard Barron, Fulton County, Ga., elections director

Warning: This audio clip contains profanities and explicit language.
Play (0:23)
This rising chatter, reminiscent of the disturbing rhetoric that emerged in the days before Jan. 6, alarmed federal officials in Washington.

On Aug. 6, the Department of Homeland Security issued a formal warning to state and local officials warning of an "increasing but modest level of individuals calling for violence in response to the unsubstantiated claims of fraud related to the 2020 election fraud and the alleged 'reinstatement' of former President Trump."

Local officials didn't need Washington to tell them what was happening. It was obvious every day when they checked their email and voice mail.

In Houghton County, Mich., clerk Jennifer Kelly instructed her staff to record the serial numbers of voting machines, document the unbroken seals on tabulators and note in writing that no one had tampered with the equipment. (Photos by Fábio Erdos for The Washington Post)

What can we do to reassure voters that we keep their ballots secure, thought Kelly, the Houghton County clerk, in advance of a usually sleepy municipal election in early August. She decided to take extraordinary precautions: Sheinstructed her staff to record the serial numbers of voting machines, document the unbroken seals on tabulators and note in writing that no one had tampered with the equipment.

Without those measures, Kelly feared, the public would continue to doubt the results.

The low-turnout race went smoothly. But residents still peppered her with public records requests about the security of voting machines and debunked claims that Sharpie pens rendered ballots unreadable, a claim that first took root in Arizona. Months after 2020, and "we're in the same spot," Kelly said. "There is all this doubt, so many questions, so many suggestions that there was crookedness."

Listen to threat against Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon

Warning: This audio clip contains profanities and explicit language.
Play (0:18)
Mendoza visits the Rotunda on Sept. 9 for the first time since the insurrection. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

213 days after

On the first Saturday in August, Capt. Carneysha Mendoza Capt. Carneysha Mendoza Close A 19-year veteran of the Capitol Police, Mendoza led officers battling rioters in the Rotunda of the Capitol on Jan. 6. , who had been promoted to the head of the Capitol Police civil disturbance units, was called into work for an unscheduled shift. Law enforcement had received intelligence that a group might try to break into the building.

It was at least the 30th time since Jan. 6 that such a threat had prompted the force to go on high alert.

In her office, Mendoza listened to her radio and typed away on her keyboard. Whiteboards on the wall behind her tracked her team's progress in completing tasks the Capitol Police had identified as urgent in the wake of January's attack. Among the items listed as complete: Get rid of aging shields. Joint training exercises. Write a new pepper-ball policy.

A note hung on one of the boards, scrawled by Mendoza late one recent night. "Tragedy is not the end of our story," it read.

She wanted the reminder, not just for herself but for her officers. But she knew many were struggling, never able to feel fully off-duty even when home with their families.

That day's alert turned out to be a false alarm. But one day soon, Mendoza knew, it might be the real thing again.

"There is no normal anymore," she said. "Normal is gone. This is just it."

Mendoza knew that many officers, like her, had been struggling since Jan. 6. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Hard-edged and sometimes violent rhetoric about the election persisted, even drawing back in Trump supporters who faced possible jail time for their actions.

Jensen, who had been captured on video on Jan. 6 chasing a Capitol Police officer on Jan. 6, had been released from jail a month earlier. His attorney argued that he had disavowed conspiracy theories and recognized "that he bought into a pack of lies." Under the terms of his release, he was not allowed to access the Internet while he awaited trial.

But Jensen admitted he had spent two days watching coverage of a symposium about alleged fraud in the 2020 election put on by MyPillow's Lindell. He was ordered back to jail.

For his part, Paul Hodgkins Paul Hodgkins Close The 38-year-old crane operator from Tampa traveled to Washington to show his support for Trump after absorbing false claims that the election was rigged - a decision that would drastically upend his life. had agreed to plead guilty to obstructing the electoral count - becoming the first rioter to besentenced for a felony for his role on Jan 6. At his sentencing, he asked for mercy. U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss said that carrying a Trump flag into the well of the Senate amounted to "declaring his loyalty to a single individual over the nation."

"In that act, he captured the threat to democracy that we all witnessed that day," Moss said.

Hodgkins, seen after church in Tampa in September, doesn't blame Trump: "I made my own foolish choice." (Edward Linsmier for The Washington Post)

As the reality of eight months behind bars set in, Hodgkins became increasingly agitated. His conviction cost him his job as a crane operator. He learned that because his sentence was for less than a year, he could not earn time off for good behavior. A friend from the Trump campaign set up a fundraising website for him. "Paul is a true patriot," it stated. "He was unjustly sentenced to 8 months in federal prison for entering the Capitol for 15 minutes and taking a few selfies."

Weeks before he was set to report to prison, Hodgkins hired a new attorney who had falsely argued on social media that antifa and Democrats instigated the chaos at the Capitol.

In court, the attorney - who had been practicing law for less than a year - laid the groundwork for an appeal and argued that Hodgkins's signature on his plea agreement had been forged. The claim quickly drew a stern rebuke from Moss, who noted that Hodgkins had previously affirmed his signature under oath.

Within days, Hodgkins decided to abandon the idea of appealing.

On a Sunday in September, he got 10 inches of his long hair cut off, went to church and prepared to report to prison the next day.

Still, he didn't blame the former president.

"I made my own foolish choice," Hodgkins said. He would vote for Trump if he ran again. Maybe Trump would even pardon him one day.

Mike Lindell of MyPillow joined Trump at a rally in Ohio in June. Lindell has spent millions of his own money on films and rallies promoting false claims about voter fraud. (Photos by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

229 days after

By the fall, 650 people had been arrested and charged in the Capitol attack, and law enforcement officials said they expected hundreds of more arrests. Justice Department officials, who had initially estimated the number of potential criminal suspects to be about 800 people, now calculated that between 2,000 and 2,500 people went into the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Investigators still had not found the person who planted the pipe bombs outside the offices of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee. On two occasions, agents thought they might have identified a suspect. But further probing led them to dismiss those individuals as culprits.

GOP leaders were also ready to move on from the Capitol attack. Graham, who had rebuked the president on Jan. 6, told a group of Michigan Republicans in September that he hoped Trump would run again.

For his part, Trump began quizzing candidates seeking his endorsement, wanting to first hear that they too believed the election was stolen before issuing his nod. He threw his weight behind those challenging Cheney and other Republicans who had voted for impeachment - and ramped up pressure to reexamine last election. By late summer, he had dialed up GOP leaders in a half-dozen states, applying a personal squeeze to those who wanted to stop re-litigating the 2020 vote.

In Pennsylvania, state Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman (R) - who had initially resisted such a review - announced in late August that there would be hearings into the election, which Biden won by more than 80,000 votesin his state. He sought to assure Trump voters that he had the former president's support, telling conservative media personality Wendy Bell that he had spoken about the effort with Trump himself.

"I think he's comfortable where we are headed," Corman said. Within weeks, a legislative committee had moved to issue subpoenas seeking a wide range of data and personal information about the state's voters.
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In Wisconsin, where Biden edged out Trump by 20,000 votes, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) was also feeling the heat. He backed a review of the election, even hiring retired police officers at one point to investigate claims of illegality. But Trump said he had not gone far enough, accusing Vos of "working hard to cover up election corruption."

The burden would fall to election officials, Gableman said, to prove that the election was not tainted.

Trump supporters gather in Phoenix in September as they awaited the findings of the Arizona ballot review. (Photos by Caitlin O'Hara for The Washington Post)

262 days after

During a congressional recess in early September, Carbajal drove past a political rally in downtown Santa Barbara. Carbajal, the House Democrat who had flown home to his district on California's Central Coast the day after the riots surrounded by angry Trump supporters, pulled over to take a look.

The headliner was Larry Elder, the leading Republican candidate trying to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in the upcoming recall election, at the time about a week away. In the crowd, Elder supporters waving Trump flags and wearing "Make America Great Again" hats were already speculating about fraud.

A few weeks later, Clint Hickman Clint Hickman Close As chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in 2020, the longtime Republican resisted Trump's efforts to overturn the election results. closed the door to his office at the family farm, flicked on his computer and steeled himself to listen to the findings of the Arizona ballot review, which had finally drawn to a close.

A hand recount of nearly 2.1 million ballots had come up with nearly the exact vote totals as the certified result: Biden had won the county by more than 45,000 votes.

But the contractors hired to conduct the ballot review ladened their presentation to Fann, the state Senate president, with elaborate theories that the county could have improperly accepted some ballots or deleted data. They provided no evidence of fraud or wrongdoing but nevertheless called for more investigations - including a criminal probe by Arizona's attorney general.

Frustration and weariness overtook Hickman's relief.

"This is not going to be over for a long time," he said to himself with a sigh.

Mark Finchem, the Trump-endorsed Republican running for Arizona secretary of state - which oversees the state's elections - called for arrests and demanded that Biden's win be decertified.

At a rally in Georgia the day after the Arizona audit confirmed Biden's victory, Trump boasted that "we won on the Arizona forensic audit." (Photos by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post

Trump jumped in the following day at a rally in Perry, Ga. "We won on the Arizona forensic audit," he told thousands of screaming fans, "at a level that you wouldn't believe."

The former president said out loud the worst fears of his critics: that his obsessive focus on the past was about making it harder for him to ever lose again.

"I have great, great friends that really want what's best for us," Trump said. "They say: 'Sir, you're leading in every poll by numbers like nobody's ever seen before. Think to the future, not to the past,' " he told the crowd. "And I say, if we don't think about the past, you'll never win again in the future because it's all rigged. It's all rigged."

After predicting Republicans would win the 2022 midterms, he said there would be an "even more glorious victory in November 2024."

That day in Phoenix, more than 100 Trump supporters gathered on the lawn of the state Capitol to protest the prosecution of the Jan. 6 rioters. A knot of people dressed in the Proud Boys' signature black-and-yellow garb drew a shout-out from a GOP House lawmaker as he addressed the rally.

Out in the crowd, the demonstrators echoed Trump over and over again. The Jan. 6 rioters were patriots, some said. The system is rigged. Those in power are corrupt. The country is crumbling, and elections can no longer be trusted to fix it.

It was all so familiar: A year earlier, Trump supporters had voiced those same angry sentiments in the run-up to Election Day. Everything that had transpired since - the false claims about the vote, the president's attempts to subvert the results, a violent assault on a branch of government - had only deepened the conviction of some of those gathered on the lawn that day.

To them, the options were dwindling.
Jacqueline Alemany, Hannah Allam, Emma Brown, Alice Crites, Tom Jackman, Carol D. Leonnig, Marianna Sotomayor, Julie Tate and Rachel Weiner in Washington; Jeremy Duda in Phoenix; Mark Shavin in Kennesaw, Ga.; and McKenzie Beard, Caroline Cliona Boyle, Heather MacNeil, Aneeta Mathur-Ashton, Vanessa Montalbano, Megan Ruggles, Nick Trombola and Carley Welch with the American University-Washington Post practicum program contributed to this report.
"Short of bloodshed, I don't know of any way to fix what we currently have going on," said Wade Damms, a 47-year-old from Snowflake, Ariz., who works in construction.

"I'd take part in it," he continued. "I'd just need someone else to be the leader."

Trump supporters at a rally in Des Moines on Oct. 9. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

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After Jan. 6, threats and disinformation take hold across the U.S.

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Menacing threats and disinformation spread across the country following the Jan. 6 siege, shaking the underpinnings of American democracy.

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new video loaded: Day of Rage: How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol

transcript

Day of Rage: How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol

A six-month Times investigation has synchronized and mapped out thousands of videos and police radio communications from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, providing the most complete picture to date of what happened - and why.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." [cheering] They came from all 50 states out of some sense of patriotic duty ... "It's so much more than just rallying for President Trump. It's really rallying for our way of life. The American dream, against fake news." ... to protest an election they believed had been stolen. "Stop the steal! Stop the steal!" "We're here, patriots. We're in Washington D.C. Capitol building dead in front of us." Their day of action would be Jan. 6 ... "The House comes to order." ... when Congress would count electoral ballots and ratify the 2020 election results. For some, it was just a rally for their president. For others, it was a call to arms. "We have the power in numbers. March on Congress directly after Trump's speech." In the weeks beforehand, there were over a million mentions on social media of storming the Capitol. Maps were shared of the building's layout. There was talk of bringing weapons and ammunition, and discussion over which lawmakers should be targeted first. This anger was based on a lie. "This election was a fraud." A lie that had grown more frenzied after the election. "President Trump won this election." "They were flipping votes." "Steal the election in Philadelphia." "When you win in a landslide and they -" "Steal the election in Atlanta -" "And it's rigged -" "Steal the election in Milwaukee -" "It's not acceptable." "This is outrageous." A lie spread by the president and his closest allies. "Let's call out cheating when we find it." Some of whom stoked calls for violence. "All hell is going to break loose tomorrow." "Everyone's going to remember who actually stands in the breach and fights tomorrow. And who goes running off like a chicken." "We bleed freedom." "This will be their Waterloo." "And we will sacrifice for freedom." "This will be their destruction." "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" What happened next was chaos. "They broke the glass?" Insurrection. "Take it now!" "Treason! Treason!" Death. Then, there began a campaign to whitewash history, starting at the top. "It was a zero threat. Right from the start, it was zero threat." And spreading throughout the Republican Party. "Even calling it an insurrection, It wasn't. By and large, it was peaceful protest." One lawmaker, who helped barricade the House doors, now suggests there was barely any threat. "If you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit." A tourist visit this was not. And the proof is in the footage. As part of a six-month investigation, The New York Times has collected and forensically analyzed thousands of videos, most filmed by the rioters themselves. We obtained internal police radio traffic ... ... and went to court to unseal police body-cam footage. Our reconstruction shows the Capitol riot for what it was, a violent assault encouraged by the president on a seat of democracy that he vowed to protect. We'll chart how police leaders failed to heed warnings of an impending attack, putting rank-and-file officers in danger. We'll track key instigators in the mob taking advantage of weaknesses in the Capitol's defenses to ignite a wave of violence that engulfed the building. We'll show, for the first time, the many simultaneous points of attack, and the eight breaches of what appeared to be an impenetrable institution of government. We'll show how the delay to secure Congress likely cost a rioter her life. And how for some, storming the Capitol was part of the plan, all along. "In fact, tomorrow, I don't even like to say it because I'll be arrested." "Well, let's not say it. We need to go - I'll say it." "All right." "We need to go in to the Capitol." "Let's go!" It's the morning of Jan. 6, and thousands are filling the National Mall in Washington. Trump will speak here at the Ellipse, a large park near the White House and a half-hour walk to the U.S. Capitol where the election will be certified. Who is actually in this crowd? Most are ordinary citizens who believe Trump's lie that the election was stolen. "It's going to be a great day. It's going to be wild, as Trump says." But we also see more extreme groups who've gained a following during Trump's presidency. There are followers of the QAnon conspiracy ... "Drinking their blood, eating our babies." ... who believe that Trump is facing down a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. Q posts often invoked notions of patriotism and predict a coming storm. And ahead of Jan. 6, some supporters call for violence. The Oath Keepers, a far-right paramilitary group, are also here. "We have men already stationed outside D.C. -" Their leader has said the group is ready to follow Trump's orders and take members of what they call the "Deep State" into custody. They're organized, staging their military-style equipment neatly on the ground. And later, they put on body armor, talk on radios, and chat with their supporters on a walkie-talkie app called Zello. "We have a good group. We got about 30, 40, of us who are sticking together and sticking to the plan. Y'all, we're one block away from the Capitol, now. I'm probably going to go silent when I get there because I'm going to be a little busy." Another group is the Proud Boys. They're far-right nationalists who flashed white power signs throughout the day. "Check out all this testosterone." They became a household name when Trump invoked them during a presidential debate. "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by." And that's what they did. They have a history of street violence and will be key instigators of the riot. We'll return to them soon. Although the rally is billed as a political protest, some make calls to storm the Capitol even before Trump speaks. And later, when Trump does take the stage ... "We're going to walk down to the Capitol." ... some hear his words as a call to action. "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building." Two hours before this, the Proud Boys were already heading for the Capitol. They're clearly spoiling for a fight with far-left agitators like antifa, who they believe are in D.C. But there are moments that suggest another motive. "Come on, tighten up." "Come on, boys. They're organized, too. Many are marked with orange tape or hats. They're wearing body armor, carrying baseball bats and using radios. "That's affirmative. Jesse, this is Tucker" Leading them is Ethan Nordean, who's been entrusted with so-called war powers. He's joined by other well-known Proud Boys like Joe Biggs, an organizer from Florida, Dominic Pezzola, a former Marine, and Billy Chrestman. They will be among the first rioters inside the Capitol building. "Proud Boys." As Trump is speaking, some of his other supporters also head to the Capitol. Chanting: "Whose streets? Our streets! Whose streets? Our streets!" And the tone is becoming menacing. "And we're going to storm the [expletive] Capitol. [expletive] you, [expletive]." "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" Just ahead, officers guarding the building are understaffed and ill-equipped for what's coming their way. "You going to stop us?" The building is more than two football fields in length. And barricades erected on the east side are defended by just a few dozen officers. The west side, facing Trump's rally, is even lighter. The fencing has been extended and on the northwest approach, only five officers stand guard. Around five also defend the southwest approach, a few more dot the lawn and about a dozen officers are behind them. Plans to storm the Capitol were made in plain sight, but the F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security did not deem those threats as credible. "We will take that building!" "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" Capitol Police leaders and Washington's mayor were warned at least three times of violent threats, but also didn't take them seriously or circulate that information. And they declined offers of security personnel from federal and other agencies. They could have enlisted several hundred more Capitol police for duty on Jan. 6, but did not. And none of the officers on the barricades have protective gear or crowd-control equipment. As a result, the Capitol is sparsely defended. "Whose House? Our House! Whose House? Our House!" It's 12:50 p.m. and a large group of Proud Boys is with other protesters right by the Capitol Police line. Joe Biggs is rallying them. When he's approached by Ryan Samsel, a Trump supporter from Pennsylvania. They chat, we don't know about what. But a minute later, Samsel is the first to approach the police line. And it's now that the protest turns violent. "U.S.A.!" Without hesitation, the crowd overpowers the police. Nearby, a second group breaks through on another approach. Others jump fences. And now hundreds of rioters rush forward on several fronts. "D.C. is a [expletive] war zone." Police retreat to the Capitol building where it's becoming more threatening. "This is what we came for! Yeah!" A mob mentality begins to take hold. Police are so outnumbered, they're forced to retreat again to more tightly defend access points to the Capitol. It's now five minutes into the siege that the Capitol Police chief calls for backup from local law enforcement, known as the Metropolitan Police, and asks other Capitol leaders to mobilize the National Guard. "You took an oath! Does that not mean a damn thing to you, does it?" Metro Police will arrive within 15 minutes. But for reasons we'll explain later, the National Guard won't arrive for over four hours. "Back up! Back up!" Meanwhile, more Capitol Police come to reinforce the line. It's the first time we see officers in riot gear. But most are missing their shields because they had not prepared to unlock the storage area where that equipment is kept. Proud Boys like Billy Chrestman keep rallying the mob. And again, they start brawling with the police. Minutes later, reinforcements from the Metro Police arrive. A high-ranking Metro officer immediately calls for more backup. They struggle to subdue rioters who respond with their own chemical spray. And within 30 minutes, the police already have casualties. [shouting] This first wave of rioters battling police has paved the way across Capitol grounds for others to follow. And after Trump finishes speaking, thousands more now fill the space. Meanwhile, inside the Capitol, Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence have begun certifying the 2020 presidential election results. Certification will happen on both sides of the building, in the House and the Senate. And this is what the rioters want to stop. An hour into the assault, the mob is battling a police line here, along the west face of the Capitol. But that violence is now going to spread to multiple points of attack, as west side rioters stream around the Capitol and incite the crowd on the east. Here's what that crowd looks like on the east. "Stop the steal! Stop the steal! Stop the steal!" They're aware of the siege happening on the west side, and some are emboldened by it. But up until now, they've been kept behind the barricades. "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" Then this group from the west storms around to the building and pushes right through the barriers. The police here barely put up a fight. And it's now that protesters, all along the east barricades, surge forward. [cheering] Officers are overwhelmed from several directions, and retreat to guard Capitol entrances. But these rioters believe they've been deputized by their president to stop a crime. And now, they start trying to get into the building itself. [shouting] [glass breaking] [pounding on door] The Capitol is now surrounded. Rioters haven't made it inside yet, but around the time that the mob on the east pushed forward, rioters on the west were making a pivotal move. This scaffolding was erected for the upcoming inauguration of Joe Biden. It covers a staircase that gives direct access to an upper level, and dozens of doors and windows. Three police lines guard that route. But at ground level, officers are so overwhelmed that just a few cover this crucial access point. Several Proud Boys see the weakness. Proud Boys start fighting the police, and with others in the mob, they push through the line. Over several minutes, it's a brutal fight on these steps. At one point, the rioters are held back. [groaning] But they make a final push up the flight of stairs. [cheering] At the top, they scuffle again with a small group of officers ... ... who give in after barely a minute. The mob now has direct access to Capitol entrances. "I can't believe this is reality. We accomplished this [expletive]." And hundreds more protesters below, surge forward. "Let's go! The siege is ours." It's utter mayhem, and it's about to get worse. This scene is being filmed from countless angles allowing us to piece together, moment by moment, what comes next. Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola uses a police shield he stole to bash in a window. And at 2:13 p.m., the Capitol is breached. Michael Sparks, a Trump supporter from Kentucky, is the first person inside. A police officer seems unsure of what to do and backs off. Sparks is followed by Proud Boys and other far-right extremists, one carrying a Confederate flag, another armed with a baseball bat. When rioters break open the locked doors, hundreds more rush in. [shouting] [glass breaking] This is a critical moment. Officers must now defend the outside and inside of the building, stretching them even further. Simultaneous events now happen that are critical to lawmakers' safety. Rioters head straight for the Senate, and will be at its doors in two minutes. Above them, the Senate is called into recess. "We'll pause." Members will evacuate down these stairs. In this hallway, directly overhead the rioters, Officer Eugene Goodman is sprinting to overtake them. He passes Mitt Romney, who he warns to turn around. Reinforcements are following behind. Goodman overtakes the mob, goes downstairs and intercepts them. He holds them off while backup arrives upstairs. Behind these rioters, and just feet away, is an escape route where the lawmakers and Senate staff are now fleeing. Just one officer stands guard. Keeping his composure, Goodman draws the mob away from that escape route to where reinforcements are waiting. Goodman: "Second floor!" He glances toward the Senate, and realizes the door is unguarded. Goodman shoves the protester again, lures the mob away, and brings them into that line of fellow officers. Again, the rioters here are convinced it's their duty to defend democracy. "We're not [expletive] around! Because we are mad!" [shouting] The officers hold them off here, for now. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Capitol, a few political leaders are evacuated from the House of Representatives. But despite a lockdown alert, proceedings here will resume. "The House will be in order." We'll go there soon. First, we'll go to the Crypt in the center of the Capitol below the Rotunda. The mob is already at its entrance. If they get through here, they will more easily fan out across the building. Rioters jostle with police here for six minutes, and then flood through. It's now 2:24 p.m., some 90 minutes after the siege began, and the mob is about to overrun the building. "Stop the steal! Stop the steal!" As this is happening, and as thousands more swell outside, Trump composes a tweet. Not to calm his supporters, but to blame his vice president. He writes: At this very time, Pence and his family are being taken to safety, along with an aide who's carrying the country's nuclear launch equipment. "O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave?" At 2:25 p.m., there's another major breach on the opposite side of the building, the east side. Rioters have been battling a handful of officers at these doors for almost half an hour. The tide turns when rioters who came through the Crypt, reach these doors and pull them open. Then an active-duty Marine Corps officer, Christopher Warnagiris, keeps that door open for the mob to flood in. Just as elsewhere, this crowd is a mix of die-hard Trump supporters, but also more organized groups like the Oath Keepers, who move in formation here toward that east side entrance. The Oath Keepers and their supporters continue to update each other on the Zello chat app. The group enters the Capitol together. Proud Boys are near them, including Joe Biggs, the organizer we saw earlier. He's entering the building for a second time. The Oath Keepers fill the Rotunda along with hundreds of other rioters. "Took over the Capitol. Overran the Capitol." "We're in the [expletive] Capitol, bro." Now the police inside the building are completely outnumbered and call for backup. "It's our House!" "Whose House?" "Our House!" Throughout the Capitol, staffers have barricaded doors to keep the mob out. In Nancy Pelosi's chambers, staffers rush inside a conference room and lock two doors behind them. Just 12 minutes later, rioters outside head straight for her offices. "Nancy! Nancy!" And pile in. Huddled together under a table, Pelosi's staff record what's happening. One rioter tries to break into that same room. Inside, staffers are silent as they record him pounding. [loud banging] He gets through the first door, but the second door keeps him out. It's a scene that, again, shows just how compromised the U.S. government has become. "I think I like my new dining room." By 2:30 p.m., the Senate evacuation is well underway. But even though a lockdown was called over 15 minutes ago, the House is still in session. "Do not accept Arizona's electors as certified." Representative Jim McGovern is chairing. He told us he wanted to finish hearing objections to the election results by Paul Gosar. House staff and security gave McGovern the all-clear to continue. It's a delay that likely cost someone their life. Suddenly, staff are now pointing at the chamber's doors. Just outside, a mob of 100 or more is baying to get into them. These rioters pay little heed to the thin line of police. "They're going. Yeah, I would just stop - bro." And in moments, are pushing against the doors into the House. "Stop the steal!" On the other side, Capitol Police erect a barricade and draw their guns. "You're a traitor." On the floor, lawmakers are evacuated to the rear of the chamber, where in a few minutes a rioter will be shot and killed. Part of the mob outside now peels off in that direction to find a different way in. Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and QAnon supporter, is among the first to arrive at the rear of the House. "Open the door." They see the lawmakers escaping. That lobby might have been clear had the House been evacuated sooner. But the rioters now become incensed. Zachary Alam, a Trump supporter from Pennsylvania, punches in the glass panels with his bare fists. [pounding on door] "Open the door." Police are stretched extremely thin. Just three officers and a security staffer stand guard. None are wearing riot gear, and they keep their weapons holstered. "It's going to get worse." "Open the door." When a team of heavily armed police now arrives, the three officers step aside. "Go! Let's go! Get this." This creates a crucial gap that allows rioters to smash in the glass. A warning - what happens next is graphic. It's 2:44 p.m., and behind the door, a police officer draws his handgun. Babbitt vaults into the window and the officer shoots her once. [gunshot] "Oh! Oh!" It's a fatal wound through the upper chest. Inside the chamber, the floor is clear, but lawmakers in the balcony are sheltering in place. [gunshot] "The [expletive]?" "Take your pins off." "Pins off." They now remove the breast pins that identify them as members of Congress. A group of rioters who almost made it to the balcony are held at gunpoint as it's finally evacuated. Now Trump supporters have achieved their goal, stopping the election certification. And while the House is evacuated, at the other side of the building, the Senate is occupied. "Treason! Treason! Treason!" On the Senate floor, they leaf through lawmakers' files. "There's got to be something in here we can [expletive] use against these scumbags." Mug for photos. "Jesus Christ -" Pray. "We invoke Your name. Amen!" "Amen!" And leave a message for Mike Pence. "It's only a matter of time. Justice is coming." As rioters inside have been rampaging throughout the Capitol, the crowd outside has grown. And that first battle has continued raging. [horn blowing] For almost two hours, officers face off with rioters who say they support the police ... ... but assault them, anyway. We're going to show what happened here because it demonstrates, yet again, how failures by Capitol Police leaders to prepare put the safety of these officers at risk. "Leave him alone! Leave him alone!" Capitol Police had been ordered to withhold some of their stronger weapons. But as soon as Robert Glover, a Metro Police inspector arrives, he calls for his munitions team to help. When the building is breached, Glover knows he needs to retreat and seeks advice from Capitol leaders. [shouting] When Capitol don't respond, he asks four times. "Push! Push! Push! Push!" Then, the police lose the line. "We the people, we are the storm!" Rioters knock an officer over, throw a fire extinguisher. "U.S.A.!" Glover issues a 10-33, the call of last resort. Crazed rioters hound the police even as they retreat to the upper level. Police now begin to guard this doorway, an iconic centerpiece of presidential inaugurations. But for another two hours, the same pattern will repeat. Rioters fill the terrace. Instigators trigger a frenzy. And tragically, someone will die. A brutal fight erupts in the doorway. The mob heaves in a coordinated scrum. [screaming] "Help!" When police finally push them out, they face even worse violence. They are tased, gassed and robbed of their equipment. They're beaten with a crutch, a hockey stick and even an American flag. At least four officers are pulled into the crowd. One dragged by his own helmet, face down. And again, the frenzy turns fatal. Rosanne Boyland, a Trump supporter who has been swept up by QAnon conspiracies, is moving toward the door. But amid the scrum, she collapses and is lying unconscious beneath the mob. [crowd chants] "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" As the crowd sarcastically chants a Black Lives Matter slogan, Boyland's friend, Justin Winchell, tries to pull her to safety. He screams for help. But instead, fellow rioters trample over Boyland and charge at the police again. Boyland will be pronounced dead at a local hospital in the evening. By the end of the day, rioters have breached and entered the building in at least eight locations. There's the first breach, which we've seen, when rioters smashed through two windows and a door. Beside that, a rioter with a crowbar smashes in a second door, and then opens it to hundreds of people. Others smash a window next to the Inauguration door and climb inside. "Patriots, we need people to stand up for our country and our Constitution." At this entrance, police stand aside and allow rioters to stream in, unchallenged. On the north side of the building, police in riot gear yield and let the crowd in. Another three breaches are on the east side, two by the central doors into the Rotunda, and this southeast door leading to the House chamber. It's the arrival of more Metropolitan Police and other agencies that finally turns the tide. When those officers enter the Rotunda, they clear it in just 20 minutes. As the mob is pushed back through the east doors, their rage turns to Mike Pence, who Trump attacked earlier. Metro officers also stop other rioters from entering on the west side, where the mob first broke in. But here, too, we see a crowd empowered by the belief that they're carrying out some patriotic duty. Over the course of the day, 150 police officers are injured. After 4 p.m., Metro and Capitol Police regain control of the upper levels. The final parts of the interior are cleared by other law enforcement, including federal agencies. Tear gas and flash bangs disperse the crowd on the Inauguration terrace. The Virginia State Police and Arlington County Police help to reclaim that area. Then rioters are swiftly pushed off Capitol grounds by a reinforced police line. Only now, more than three hours after Capitol police first called them, do National Guard soldiers arrive. "You can diffuse and turn down, right now." Troops were staging just 20 minutes away. But a recent procedural change meant the highest level of the Pentagon had to approve deployment. And Pentagon officials delayed the decision, partially in fear of bad optics, even as the Capitol was being overrun. As calm returns, the president tweets again. He repeats that the election had been stripped away, calls his supporters great patriots, and says: The aftermath of Jan. 6 has been as divisive as the lie that launched it. Even as one arm of government has indicted hundreds of rioters, Republican lawmakers continue efforts to normalize what happened with a mix of denials and conspiracy theories. "Some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters." "I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break a law. And so I wasn't concerned." They include Paul Gosar, who'd been at the Trump rally. "The D.O.J. is harassing peaceful patriots across the country." And Andrew Clyde, who we saw earlier, standing just a few feet from rioters. "There was no insurrection. And to call it an insurrection, in my opinion, is a bald-faced lie." Republican leaders have blocked an independent investigation that could have brought new details to light. "I've made the decision to oppose the House Democrats' slanted and unbalanced proposal for another commission to study the events of January the 6th." And in May, a top Republican was ousted from the party's leadership after blaming Trump for inspiring the riot. "And I think that the party is in a place that we've got to bring it back from." None of what happened on Jan. 6 would have been possible without a huge mass of ordinary people who were proud of what they achieved. "We made it!" "Yeah! We stopped the vote!" Millions around the country still believe the violence was not only justified, but necessary. And the forces that brought them there have not gone away. "Yeah, the patriots are coming back, y'all. Hopefully, y'all will be on our side when that happens."

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Video: Day of Rage: How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol

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new video loaded: Day of Rage: How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol transcript A six-month Times investigation has synchronized and mapped out thousands of videos and police radio communications from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, providing the most complete picture to date of what happened - and why.

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'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host shows how the media uses history as a tool to distort the truth

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Background

The conduct of the 2020 presidential election was significantly affected by the deadly COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the early stages of which coincided with the first presidential primary elections in February and March. Because of the evident risk to public health, governors and election officials in several states postponed primary elections or implemented changes to election procedures to enable voters to cast their ballots safely. Among such measures were extending early-voting periods and loosening or eliminating requirements for obtaining or casting absentee (mail-in) ballots, which millions of voters were expected to use as a safer alternative to in-person voting. Correctly anticipating that Democratic voters would be more likely than Republican voters to use absentee ballots (in part because Trump had repeatedly downplayed the extent of the pandemic and the seriousness of the illness), the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee (RNC), and Republican leaders in several states filed scores of lawsuits alleging that the changes undermined the constitutional authority of state legislatures to make election law or that they invited individual voter fraud. Nearly all of the suits were dismissed or withdrawn. Amid those failed challenges, Trump continued to falsely claim that Democrats were plotting to "rig" the election through voter fraud and by systematically forging, altering, or discarding absentee ballots, among other illegal means. His accusations were of a piece with his frequent assertions during the 2016 presidential campaign that the election of that year, which he won, would be rigged by Democrats.

In a press encounter in the early morning of November 4, the day after the election, Trump maintained his false narrative of Democratic cheating by declaring himself the winner and denouncing the ongoing counting of absentee ballots as a "fraud on the American people." During the next several weeks he continually accused Biden and the Democrats of having stolen the presidential election and repeated conspiracy theories involving ballot stuffing, dead voters, and malicious voting-machine software that deleted or changed millions of votes for Trump. His false accusations were indirectly endorsed by several Republican members of Congress who expressed uncertainty about the election's outcome or who simply refused to publicly acknowledge Biden's victory. Their calculated reticence helped to spread false doubts about the integrity of the election among rank-and-file Republicans. (Such manufactured doubts were later cited by Republican governors and election officials in several states to justify new "election integrity" laws that made it harder for some Democrats to vote and easier for partisan state legislatures to improperly influence or overturn statewide elections- see voter suppression.)

As vote counting continued, various groups of radicalized Trump supporters quickly coalesced around the idea that forceful protests and even violent direct action were necessary to stop the counting of fraudulent ballots and thereby to prevent Biden from taking office. A short-lived Facebook group calling itself "Stop the Steal" was created on November 4 and grew to some 320,000 members in less than 24 hours before the social media company shut it down because of posts containing disinformation and calls for violence ( see also collective violence). Stop the Steal enthusiasts soon migrated to other social media venues, where they repeated and elaborated conspiracy theories about the election and organized on-the-ground demonstrations in several cities, including at polling stations where supposedly fraudulent vote counting was underway.

After the electors from each state cast their votes for president and vice president on December 14, giving Biden a victory of 306 electoral votes to 232, Trump and his allies, as well as leaders of Stop the Steal and other pro-Trump groups across the country, turned their attention to the last, formal step in the election of a U.S. president, the ceremonial opening and counting of the electoral votes of each state in a joint session of Congress, presided over by the vice president and commencing on January 6, a date fixed in federal law. Some allies reportedly advised Trump-incorrectly-that the vice president's role in the electoral-vote counting would give Trump's vice president, Mike Pence, the constitutional authority to replace Democratic slates of electors with Republican ones and thereby to block Congress's confirmation of Biden's victory.

The attack and its aftermath

Meanwhile, in several tweets beginning in mid-December, Trump encouraged his supporters to attend a rally and march on January 6 to protest the vote-counting ceremony. In one of the tweets, Trump stated, "Be there, will be wild!" At the rally, held at a public park near the White House, a crowd of thousands, which included members of paramilitary organizations and other right-wing extremists, listened to speeches by Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Trump's sons Donald, Jr., and Eric, among others. In his own address, which began at about noon, Trump repeated well-worn falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the stolen election; called on Pence to block Congress's confirmation of the electoral college vote-declaring that, if Pence failed to act, the rally crowd would not let the confirmation take place ("We're just not going to let that happen"); encouraged the crowd to "walk down Pennsylvania Avenue" to the Capitol building; and urged his audience to "fight like hell" or "you're not going to have a country anymore." Although Trump did not explicitly direct those in attendance to commit illegal acts, his generally incendiary language plainly suggested to many in the crowd that they would be justified in violently attacking the Capitol and members of Congress to prevent Biden from becoming president.

Even before Trump finished his address shortly after 1:00 pm, and just as the joint session of Congress was being convened, a mob of his supporters-including members of right-wing extremist organizations, such as the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the Three Percenters, as well as self-identified adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory-pushed through fences at the western perimeter of the Capitol grounds, forcing Capitol Police officers to retreat to additional barricades closer to the building ( see United States: The 2020 U.S. election and United States presidential election of 2020: Aftermath: Trump's refusal to concede and the insurrection at the Capitol). The mob grew larger as ever more people arrived from the rally at which Trump had spoken. Capitol Police officers, along with reinforcements from the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, were overwhelmed. Many officers were brutally beaten with deadly weapons (bats, pipes, and flag poles), sprayed with chemical irritants, or crushed and trampled by the surging crowd. As the rioting continued outside, the joint session was temporarily adjourned to allow the House and Senate to separately debate a Republican challenge to the Democratic slate of electors from Arizona. By about 2:00 pm the rioters had breached the last barrier on the west side of the building and were running up the Capitol steps and scaling the walls of the West Terrace. Another mob also had broken through barriers on the east side of the Capitol.

Shortly after 2:00 pm the rioters shattered windows to break into the west side of the building, and for the next few hours they vandalized and looted the interior and ransacked offices as they searched for their perceived enemies in Congress. They also looked for Pence, whom they now denounced as a traitor for having refused to interfere in Congress's tabulation of electoral votes. (Shortly before the start of the joint session, Pence had released a letter in which he stated that "it is my considered judgment that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.") At about 2:20 pm Trump condemned Pence in a tweet to his followers, claiming that "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution." Only minutes after the break-in, members of the House and Senate were notified that protesters had entered the building. Realizing that their lives were in danger, many lawmakers fled or were evacuated from the building or hid behind desks or in barricaded offices and even closets. Pence was evacuated to a secure location within the complex.

The governors of Virginia and Maryland eventually dispatched National Guard units and state troopers to assist in securing the building; because of bureaucratic delays, the District of Columbia National Guard was not mobilized until about three hours after the start of the attack. The Capitol was finally cleared of rioters at about 6 pm, some four hours after they first entered the building. The vast majority of the attackers were not arrested on-site and simply walked away. Congress then resumed its tabulation of electoral votes (after dismissing Republican challenges to the slates of electors from Arizona and Pennsylvania), and Biden was certified as the winner of the 2020 presidential election in the early morning hours of January 7.

The attack on the Capitol was broadcast live on major news networks. Trump himself watched some of the assault and reportedly was pleased and excited by what he saw. After initially resisting pressure from White House aides and House minority leader Kevin McCarthy to condemn the attack, Trump reluctantly tweeted (at about 2:40 pm) a call to his followers to support the Capitol Police and to "stay peaceful." A similar tweet was issued about half an hour later. At about 4:20 pm Trump tweeted a brief video in which he once again asserted that the election had been stolen. Expressing his "love" for the rioters, he urged them to "go home," stating that "we have to have peace." Later that day he tweeted:

These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!

On January 8 Trump was banned from Twitter for having posted tweets before, during, and after the assault that violated the company's policy against glorification of violence. The ban was rescinded after Elon Musk took over the social media company.

According to a Justice Department report released in July 2021, approximately 140 Capitol and Metropolitan police officers were criminally assaulted by the rioters in the January 6 attack. Among those victims, one died of a series of strokes after being hospitalized for injuries sustained in the attack, and two others committed suicide. One of the rioters was shot and killed by police, another died of a heart attack, and a third was apparently crushed to death by the stampeding mob. The rioters caused an estimated $1.5 million in damage to the Capitol building.

On January 13, 2021, the House of Representatives, by a vote of 232 to 197, adopted a single article of impeachment against Trump for incitement of insurrection. At his Senate trial in February, which began three weeks after he left office on January 20, Trump was acquitted after only 57 senators, 10 short of the required two-thirds majority, voted to find him guilty.

During the first year after the attack, the FBI and the Justice Department arrested more than 725 of the rioters, charging them with a variety of federal crimes, including injuring law-enforcement officers, destruction and theft of government property, and conspiracy to obstruct a congressional proceeding. As of early January 2022, the FBI had yet to identify and apprehend more than 350 additional persons believed to have committed violent crimes on the Capitol grounds.

In May 2021 Senate Republicans blocked passage of a House-passed bill that would have created a national commission to investigate the January 6 attack, claiming that it would unnecessarily duplicate ongoing investigations by two Senate committees and the Justice Department (the Senate investigation, however, was focused on intelligence and communication failures by law-enforcement agencies prior to the attack). In response, the House voted along near-party lines to create its own committee, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. After Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi refused to seat two of the Republican representatives chosen by minority leader Kevin McCarthy to serve on the committee investigating the January 6th attack ( Jim Jordan and Jim Banks), McCarthy withdrew his other nominees and sought to block Republican involvement in the committee, which he branded a "sham process." When Representatives Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney ignored that directive, the Republican National Committee censured them, and McCarthy saw that Cheney was stripped of her leadership role within the party. The committee began holding hearings in July and by early January 2022 the committee had interviewed more than 300 people and collected thousands of pages of records related to the attack. It had also subpoenaed testimony and records from high-level members of the Trump administration and other Trump associates and supporters, some of whom refused to cooperate with the investigation.

In October 2021 Trump filed suit against the committee in federal district court, seeking to block the release of several hundred pages of records relating to his activities and communications before and during the attack, which the committee had originally requested in August. In December, after the district court rejected Trump's request and an appellate court upheld that decision, Trump filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court, asking that it review the district court's ruling and that it block release of the documents pending its final decision in the case. The Supreme Court denied Trump's request in January 2022, allowing the committee to begin receiving the documents from the National Archives.

See also Donald J. Trump: Presidential election of 2020.
Brian Duignan

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January 6 U.S. Capitol Attack| Background, Events, Criminal Charges, & Facts

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United States Capitol attack of 2021, assault on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, by a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump. The attack disrupted a joint session of Congress convened to certify Joe Biden's victory over Trump in the presidential election of 2020.