The U.S. Congress certified Democrat Joe Biden’s win in the November presidential election, completing its constitutional duty early Thursday, January 7, after being forced to evacuate the Capitol in Washington Wednesday when a mob of supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump swarmed the building.
Vice President Mike Pence, who presided over the interrupted session, announced the official Electoral College tally of 306 for Biden and Trump’s 232.
Trump spent the past two months repeatedly and baselessly claiming he was the winner and urging his supporters to fight result, including in multiple statements Wednesday.
As soon as Congress certified Biden’s win, Trump pledged an orderly transition of power on January 20, “even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election.”
“I have always said we would continue our fight to ensure that only legal votes were counted,” Trump said. “While this represents the end of the greatest first term in presidential history, it’s only the beginning of our fight to Make America Great Again!”
The statement was released by Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino. Both Facebook and Twitter suspended Trump’s accounts on Wednesday for violations linked to posts he made about the riots.
U.S. Capitol Police and federal, state and local law enforcement cleared the Trump supporters from the Capitol grounds, securing the chambers for Senate and House members to return around 9 p.m. Local authorities also imposed a 6pm to 6am curfew to clear Washington DC city streets.
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced after the hours of chaos that legislators would reconvene to continue the work of certifying the Electoral College vote that determines the next president.
“Today, a shameful assault was made on our democracy,” Pelosi said. “It was anointed at the highest level of government. It cannot, however, deter us from our responsibility to validate the election of Joe Biden,” she said.
The clashes came about two hours after Pence told lawmakers in a letter he would not attempt to block congressional certification of Biden’s victory in the November election, even though Trump, Pence’s boss, repeatedly implored him to stop Biden’s path to the White House after his Jan. 20 inauguration.
Trump, in an early morning Twitter comment and later at a rally with several thousand supporters near the White House, called on Pence to show “extreme courage” to block Biden’s victory.
However, when Pence balked, Trump, who has railed for weeks against the election outcome, rebuked his second-in-command, saying on Twitter, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
As the debate started, some Republican lawmakers supporting Trump immediately challenged the outcome in the Southwestern state of Arizona, which Biden narrowly won.
The Senate and House, as planned, immediately split into separate debates on the merits of the challenge to the Arizona result.
Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opposed a dozen Republican colleagues in the Senate and more than 100 House members seeking to upend the Electoral College outcome.
“The voters, the courts the states have all spoken,” McConnell said. “They’ve all spoken. If we overruled them it would damage our republic forever. This election was actually not unusually close,” he said. Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said, “The Congress does not determine the outcome of elections, the people do. By the end of the proceedings today, it will be confirmed once again, something that is well known, and well settled: The American people elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to be the next president and vice president of the United States.”
“But,” Schumer continued, Republicans “are going to object to the counting of the vote anyway, and in the process, they will embarrass themselves, they will embarrass their party, and worst of all, it will embarrass our country.”
Republican lawmakers seeking to block the certification of the Electoral College outcome echoed Trump’s claims that vote and vote-counting irregularities should void the election outcome.
Both houses of Congress would have to reject the electoral votes in several states for the result to change, which will not happen.
Democrats narrowly control the House and are certain to support Biden. In the Senate, the minority Democratic bloc was joined by numerous Republicans who have acknowledged Biden’s victory.