Five Years On, Democrats May Be Losing the Fight Over January 6

“You should be put down like a dog, diseased fucking animal you are,” one man says to a police officer, according to video captured by a HuffPost reporter. Another man hurls slurs, calling the officers “fucking r-tards,” “f-ggots,” and the N-word. In another video, the first man tells an officer, “The only solution for animals like you is public execution.”

That man is Edward Jacob Lang, a January 6 rioter who was charged with beating cops with a baseball bat. Having received a pardon from President Donald Trump before he stood trial, Lang is now running for Senate as a Republican. He’s one of a few dozen rioters who descended on Washington this week for the five-year anniversary of the attack on the US Capitol, walking free thanks to sweeping clemency from the president.

“Your day will come and I will be there for it,” Lang told an officer at one point, according to video footage. “Look left and right when you cross the street, motherfucker.”

Nearby, in a packed room in the basement of the Capitol Building, another January 6 rioter sat before a panel of House Democrats convened to mark the grim anniversary of the attack.

“I’m a mother and a grandmother and a cancer survivor and a retired addiction counselor. I am also a convicted criminal for what I did on January the 6th, 2021.” So began the testimony of Pam Hemphill, a woman known as MAGA Granny when she joined the mob that stormed the Capitol five years ago.

The hearing was convened as part of an effort to push back on Trump’s attempts to rewrite the history of the attack. Hemphill spoke alongside former Capitol police officer Winston Pingeon, who described being punched in the face, pepper sprayed, and called a traitor by the rioters. There was a former prosecutor who worked on the cases against the rioters—more than 600 of whom were charged with assaulting or obstructing police officers—and resigned from the Justice Department after Trump offered clemency to those charged over the attack. That included Hemphill, who publicly rejected Trump’s pardon, testifying that she did not deserve to evade justice.

“I had fallen for the president’s lies, just like many of his supporters,” Hemphill said. She became emotional and had to pause as she described the start of the riot. “The police officers were the heroes. They protected the Capitol and everyone inside the Capitol. And even people like me. I was trampled on by the rioters. And if it weren’t for the Capitol Police helping me that day, I might have died.”

She addressed Pingeon directly. “I want the Capitol Police to know how truly grateful I am to them and how deeply sorry I am,” she said, her voice quavering. “I can’t believe people are still disrespecting you and trying to lie about January the 6th.” In the room, Congressman Steve Cohen dabbed tears from his eyes.

Pam Hemphill, also known as MAGA Granny, testifies about her role in the January 6 attack and why she rejected a pardon from President Donald Trump, at a hearing held on the 5th anniversary of the riot.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images.

It’s easy to look at the anniversary of the attack and come to the conclusion that the fight for its legacy is one the Democrats are losing. Out of power in Washington and impotent in the face of Trump’s all-powerful White House, Democrats were forced to hold this Potemkin hearing—they called it a “shadow hearing”—in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center. Still, Democrats hope that proceedings like this, through footage and testimony, will ultimately cement the legacy of January 6. “The one thing that comforts me is that no matter what they try to do here, we live in the 21st century where people see things in real time,” Representative Joe Morelle told me in his office on Capitol Hill. “Those videos are going to be around. And so historians aren’t going to just accept Donald Trump’s twisted view of the world.” Morelle, the top Democrat on the committee charged with security of the Capitol, has been pushing to install a plaque honoring police who defended democracy that day. A 2022 government funding law ordered the plaque to be displayed within a year, but Republican leadership has blocked its installation. “It’s just bullshit,” Morelle said. “I hate to say it, but come on. We’re not children here.”

Eric Swalwell, who served on the original January 6 committee, told me he understands people are a little tired of hearing about that day. The point of the remembrance, he said, was to set the record straight: “We are doomed to have another January 6 if we’re not honest with ourselves and honest with the future, our kids who have to learn from this, about why it happened, who was responsible, and what we can do to make sure it never happens again.”

Less than two miles from the Capitol, a modest collection of the pardoned rioters assembled at the Ellipse, the site of Trump’s speech that preceded the attack, where he told his supporters, many of them armed, to protest the certification of the 2020 vote. The group that returned was not large; they appeared outnumbered by both the gaggle of reporters who came to cover the lurid spectacle and the moderately sized flock of geese that toddled on the grass nearby.

Among them: Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 22 years in prison for his role organizing the violence. One pardoned rioter, 61-year-old Johnny Harris of North Carolina, held a sign reading, “J6 WAS AN INSIDE JOB.” He declined to explain. Another man I spoke with, who gave only his first name, Sam, said he served two and a half years in prison before he was pardoned by Trump. “We should get restitution for it,” he said. “We did nothing wrong! It is our duty to stand up to a tyrannical government.” Then there was Lang, engaged in a spat with Congressman Tom Suozzi, who had walked outside to engage with the protesters. “Our Founding Fathers would have dealt with you very differently,” Lang told the congressman, according to video footage. “We were very reserved on January 6.”

“These guys now see themselves as invincible,” Swalwell told me. “They committed violence on behalf of Donald Trump. He absolved them of any responsibility for doing it. And it’s essentially a green light to commit more violence in his name.”

In the immediate wake of the attack, the view that the rioters were victims was confined to the darkest fringes of the internet. The reality of the day was seen clearly by many at the time, including Republican lawmakers and Fox News hosts who now downplay the violence, and even Trump administration officials who resigned from their jobs in protest. The day after the attack, Trump himself called it “heinous” and vowed that “those who broke the law” would “pay.” Marco Rubio posted on social media as the attack was being carried out: “There is nothing patriotic about what is occurring on Capitol Hill. This is 3rd world style anti-American anarchy.” Lindsey Graham, famously and theatrically, declared on the Senate floor that he was done with Trump. Donald Trump Jr. begged Mark Meadows, at the time his father’s chief of staff, to tell the president to do something to bring an end to the violence.

The violence was extreme. The vast trove of footage from the riot and evidence that poured out of more than 1,500 prosecutions have rendered what happened that day unmistakable. The mob ransacked the Capitol, beating police with pipes, baseball bats, bear spray, metal barriers, and other weapons. They hunted lawmakers and demanded the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence. More than 140 police officers were wounded. Four people died in the crowd at the attack. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide in the months after.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, Trump and his supporters have in the years since mounted a campaign to rewrite the history of that day. That effort culminated on Tuesday in an official White House web page that presented a revisionist history of January 6 riddled with falsehoods. The site casts the Capitol Police as the instigators of the riot and the rioters themselves as victims of police brutality and overzealous prosecution. It claims Ashli Babbitt, the rioter who was fatally shot while trying to lunge through a broken window near lawmakers, was “murdered” by a police officer. It accuses Pence of “cowardice” and “sabotage” for carrying out his constitutional duty to certify the election.

When reached for comment about the new web page, the White House accused the media of fixating on the riot. “The media’s continued obsession with January 6 is one of the many reasons trust in the press is at historic lows—they aren’t covering issues that the American people actually care about,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson. “President Trump was resoundingly reelected to enact an agenda based on securing the border, driving down crime, and restarting our economy—the president is delivering.”

Enrique Tarrio, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and sentenced to 22 years in prison before he was pardoned by President Donald Trump, speaks at the Ellipse.

Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images.

“They’re celebrating a lawless attack on the United States Capitol,” Morelle said. “I mean, it’s so hard for me to process. I almost don’t know how to give words to the frustration, the anxiety, the pain that this causes. And in any other age, I think in any other moment, January 6 would have been held as the darkest day and would continue to be viewed by Americans as a dark day in American history. It’s almost like trying to recreate 9/11 or Pearl Harbor with a positive spin.”

By the time Tuesday’s hearing had ended, the erstwhile rioters had reached the steps of the Capitol, where they laid flowers in memory of Babbitt. For all the security on the ground, there was little reason for them to stage another cosplay revolution. The fight is over; with the exception of those who died or those who were charged with other crimes ranging from child molestation to aggravated kidnapping, the rioters more or less won. Trump is back in office, having been elected by more than 77 million Americans who determined the attack was not disqualifying. As the group retraced their steps from the Ellipse to the Capitol, their jolly march was overseen by a giant banner of Trump’s scowling face, hung over three stories of the Department of Labor, on orders from his pliant Cabinet.

Democrats aren’t quitting the fight just yet. “I don’t feel helpless because I have the last surviving lawsuit that Trump has to answer for what he did on January 6,” Swalwell told me. He’s referring to a civil suit he filed alongside Capitol Police officers accusing Trump of making false claims about the 2020 election that fueled the violence that day. “I’m not giving up on that,” Swalwell said. “I’m going to get that day in court with the officers to get our own sense of justice.”