Congress set to certify Trump’s election victory four years after Capitol riot

The mahogany boxes in which the votes will be transported are ready, and security measures have been reinforced. Congress is set to meet on Monday to certify Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election of November 5. The session will be chaired by his rival at the polls, Kamala Harris, in a bitter blow for someone who has kept a very low profile since her defeat. The session comes on the fourth anniversary of the Capitol riot, when Trump supporters tried to prevent Joe Biden from being certified as the winner. Trump continues to insist that his vice president, Mike Pence, could have legally stopped the certification in 2020, as he said this past Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach (Florida).

Formally, Trump has not yet been elected president. Although he is already being described as the president-elect, that will actually happen on Monday. According to the law, the counting of the Electoral College votes and the certification of the result takes place on January 6. After that, Trump will be inaugurated on January 20, as established by the Constitution.

Trump won the election with 77.3 million votes, 49.9% of the total, compared to Harris, who got 75 million, 48.4%. Although in terms of the popular vote it was the closest result since the 2000 election, the Republican won in the seven most disputed states and thus secured 312 Electoral College votes, compared to the Democrat's 226. Trump won three million more votes than in 2020, but still fell some four million votes short of the record support achieved by Joe Biden in that election.

The joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives in which the election will be certified has traditionally been a mere formality. However, four years ago, Trump refused to acknowledge his electoral defeat and pressured his then vice president, Mike Pence, to alter the result. The Republicans devised a plan to change the popular will. The idea was to submit parallel lists of voters from the seven states where Biden had won by a narrower margin so that Pence would say that, due to the dispute, there were no valid votes cast from those states. The vice president would then simply count the rest (where Trump had 232 votes and Biden, 222) and declare Trump president.

This plan is attributed to John Eastman, Trump’s lawyer, who has been pursued by the courts for his attempts to steal the 2020 election. This past Saturday, with Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni as an illustrious guest, Trump paid tribute to Eastman at his Mar-a-Lago mansion by screening a documentary arguing that the accusations against him are unfair. Presenting the documentary The Eastman Dilemma: Lawfare of Justice, Trump insisted that the plan was viable: “I’m a big fan of John Eastman,” MSNBC reported Trump as saying. “Y’know, he was right. He happened to be right. That’s why they changed the law and nobody wants to talk about that...They said he’s not allowed to do it, he’s not allowed to do it, and they convinced him he’s not allowed to do it — our vice president — then right after the election they changed the law so he can’t do it.”

Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol four years ago did so with “Hang Mike Pence” as their rallying cry, incited by the president himself. Following the assault, which was contained by law enforcement, the session resumed. Pence remained faithful to his constitutional duties and certified Biden’s victory that same day. But Congress did indeed tighten the rules after that attack on the foundations of democracy. The new wording of the Electoral Count Act, passed in 2022, more explicitly defines the role of the vice president and makes it clear that he has no power to determine the results on January 6.

Trump and his allies have sought to rewrite the history of what happened at the Capitol, falsely portraying it as a peaceful protest and spreading conspiracy theories that leftist infiltrators were the perpetrators of the violence. The president-elect has promised mass pardons on his first day in office for those prosecuted and convicted in connection with the events of that day, although the extent of these pardons remains to be seen.

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