It has been a year since protesters stormed the capital on January 6, 2021. Following a Trump rally, hundreds of Trump’s supporters descended on the capitol, trying to interfere with the certification of the electoral votes from the 2020 presidential election.
The rioters broke through police barricades and some smashed through windows and doors to get inside the Capitol Building.
Some members of congress hid in an underground bunker while others barricaded themselves in offices to protect themselves from the people storming the Capitol.
Due to the violence, five people died and $1.5 million dollars worth of damage was caused to the building during the insurrection. Many officers were injured and suffered trauma from the riot. There were several officers present during the insurrection that later committed sucide.
This event led to the impeachment of former President Trump for incitement of insurrection on January 13, 2021. He was found not guilty in Senate trial.
In July, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, formed a bipartisan House committee to investigate the riot.
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 725 people with various crimes in relation to the January 6 insurrection, making it the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history. Individuals have been arrested from nearly all 50 states.
Some of the individuals involved in the riot were led to believe they would be pardoned by Trump in his last 14 days in office but none were granted. They are still holding out hope for a pardon.
“If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly,” Trump said during his campaign rally on January 29, 2022. “We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”
“I don’t want to reinforce that defiling the Capitol was okay,” Senator Lindsey Graham said on CBS News in response to Trump’s comments. He said that he hopes those who participated in the riot, “go to jail and get the book thrown at them, because they deserve it.”
The insurrection may also lead to problems in future elections. This may open grounds for people to try to undermine elections in the future. The United States is a democracy and the people must have faith in the election system for it to run well.
Mr. Wood, a teacher at Wilmington Friends School, said that he thinks it could go one of two ways, “The first and the way that I think most people would want, is whatever the election result is, whoever it’s between, the results are accepted and we move on and this just becomes an abnormal thing that happened one time and if that happens and we can start consistently accepting elections again. However I’m not convinced that’s what’s going to happen.” The second way he described would be a collapse of democracy in the United States.
This is further highlighted by the Pew Research Center. It shows that there is more of a divide in political views between parties than there was in the past. People have less bipartisan views and more extreme stances on issues. This could lead to further problems in the U.S. government to ensure fair elections.