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A small crowd of far-right activists marched on the U.S. Capitol Tuesday in a nonviolent protest. They followed the path of the march five years ago, when rioters attacked the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election win (Ashley Murray\/States Newsroom).<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON \u2014 Five years after a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, the struggle to define the event and assign blame carried on in events across the city Tuesday that remained nonviolent, though still disturbing.<\/p>\n
A crowd of no more than a few hundred of President Donald Trump\u2019s supporters commemorated the deadly attack with a somewhat subdued march from the Ellipse to the Capitol that was in stark contrast to the riot five years ago.<\/p>\n Inside the Capitol, U.S. House Democrats gathered in a small meeting room, apparently unable to secure larger accommodations for an unofficial hearing that largely rehashed the findings of a House committee that spent 2022 investigating the attack.<\/p>\n Trump, meanwhile, addressed House Republicans three miles west at the Kennedy Center. In an hour-plus address, he blamed then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the violence on Jan. 6, 2021 and recommended the GOP lawmakers pass laws to make election fraud more difficult. Trump\u2019s claim that his 2020 election loss was due to fraud sparked the 2021 attack.<\/p>\n \u201cOur elections are crooked as hell,\u201d he said, without citing evidence.<\/p>\n Inside the Capitol, at a morning event that U.S. House Democrats organized and in which Republicans didn\u2019t take part, lawmakers and experts criticized Trump\u2019s pardons of people involved in the 2021 attack, one of his first acts after returning to office last year.<\/p>\n They also decried his continued recasting of the events of the day.<\/p>\n White House officials launched a\u00a0webpage<\/a> Tuesday that blamed the attack on Democrats, again including Pelosi, and restated the lie that initiated the attack: The 2020 election that Trump lost was marred by fraud and should not have been certified.<\/p>\n \u201cDemocrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6,\u201d the page reads. \u201c\u2026In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Pelosi at the hearing on Tuesday condemned Trump\u2019s version of the attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cToday, that president who incited that insurrection continues to lie about what happened that day,\u201d the California Democrat said.<\/p>\n Other Democrats and their invited witnesses also described the pardons as signaling that the president accepted \u2014 and even encouraged \u2014 his supporters to pursue illegal means of keeping him in power.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brendan Ballou, a former U.S. Justice Department prosecutor who resigned shortly after Trump\u2019s 2025 pardons, told the panel the executive action sent Trump supporters the \u201cclear message\u201d they were above the law.<\/p>\n \u201cThe January 6 pardons also fit into a broader narrative of what\u2019s going on with this administration, that if people are sufficiently loyal and willing to support the president, either in words or financially, they will be put beyond the reach of the law,\u201d he added. \u201cIt means that quite literally for a certain group of people right now in America, the law does not apply to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Homeland Security Committee ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson of Mississippi led the panel discussion, with Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin of Maryland and several others also sitting in on it.<\/p>\n The first panel of witnesses included Ballou, other experts and Pamela Hemphill, a former Trump supporter from Idaho who traveled to the nation\u2019s capital five years ago to \u201cbe part of the mob\u201d in support of the president before becoming an advocate for reckoning with the day\u2019s violence.<\/p>\n An emotional Hemphill, 72 and once known as \u201cMAGA granny,\u201d apologized to U.S. Capitol police officers.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce I got away from the MAGA cult and started educating myself about January the 6th, I knew what I did was wrong,\u201d Hemphill told the panel. \u201cI pleaded guilty to my crimes because I did the crime. I received due process and the DOJ was not weaponized against me.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAccepting that pardon would be lying about what happened on January the 6th,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n She explained her decision to decline Trump\u2019s blanket pardon of offenders convicted of crimes related to the attack, saying it papered over the misdeeds of people involved in the riot. She implored others not to accept revisions of the narrative about what happened in the attack.<\/p>\n Subsequent panels included current and former House members, including two, Republican Adam Kitzinger of Illinois and Democrat Elaine Luria of Virginia, who sat on the committee tasked with investigating the attack.<\/p>\n The crowd of marchers, which included pardoned Jan. 6 attack participants, gathered in the late morning to retrace their path to the U.S. Capitol five years ago.<\/p>\n Organizers billed the march as a memorial event to honor Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by U.S. Capitol Police during the riot in 2021 as she attempted to break into the House Speaker\u2019s lobby.<\/p>\n Far-right activists celebrating the five-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol marched in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Rioters in 2021 attempted to stop the certification of Joe Biden\u2019s presidential election win. (Video by Ashley Murray\/States Newsroom)<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n The crowd of roughly a couple hundred walked from the Ellipse, where Trump spoke to rallygoers in 2021, to just outside the Capitol grounds, where police contained the small crowd on the lawn north of the Reflecting Pool.\u00a0<\/p>\n Law enforcement officers permitted Babbitt\u2019s mother,\u00a0Michelle Witthoeft, and a few others to walk closer to the Capitol to lay flowers at roughly 2:44 p.m. Eastern, the time they say Babbitt died.<\/p>\n A group of counterprotesters briefly approached the demonstration, yelling \u201ctraitors.\u201d Police quickly formed two lines between the groups, heading off any clashes.<\/p>\n Among the crowd was former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio, who was\u00a0sentenced<\/a> to 22 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Trump\u00a0commuted<\/a> Tarrio\u2019s sentence upon taking office for his second term.<\/p>\n While looking on at marchers, Tarrio told States Newsroom he was \u201cjust supporting.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not my event. I\u2019m just trying to help them with organizing and marching people down the street, I guess. But we\u2019re here for one purpose, and that\u2019s to honor the lives of Ashli Babbitt and those who passed away that day.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked if marchers were also honoring the police officers who died in the days and months after the attack, Tarrio said he mourned \u201cany loss of life\u201d but added \u201cI heard some suicides happened. I don\u2019t know. I haven\u2019t really looked into that. I\u2019ve been in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick suffered injuries during the riot,\u00a0according<\/a> to the Capitol Police. He died the following day from natural causes,\u00a0according<\/a> to the District of Columbia Office of the Medical Examiner.<\/p>\n\n\n ![\"Former](\"https:\/\/missouriindependent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/enriquetarrio2026-scaled.jpeg\")
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>House Dems blast pardons\u00a0<\/h4>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>Former \u2018MAGA granny\u2019 testifies<\/h4>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>Flowers for Ashli Babbitt<\/h4>\n
<\/div>\nProud Boys former leader on-site\u00a0<\/h4>\n
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