We verified what happened and was said on the day of the assault on the Capitol

By Louis Jacobson, Amy Sherman, Miriam Valverde, Bill McCarthy and Jon Greenberg - Politifact

After a day of riots and riots, where a woman was shot dead inside the Capitol and after senators and representatives were evacuated from their chambers, in the early morning of January 7, Congress ratified that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were the elected president and vice president of the United States.

Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress returned to the House and Senate on Wednesday night and condemned the violence that rocked the nation's capital.

Many lamented the lack of truth and facts that led to the protests over the election results.

Some senators who had planned to oppose the election results in their states, including Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, who lost the second round of the Jan.5 election in Georgia, announced that they had changed their minds.

"Today was a dark day in the history of the United States Capitol

," Pence said as he resumed the process from that night.

[Democrats seek to remove Trump from the White House ... and the nuclear codes]

Earlier that day, Trump had addressed a large crowd of supporters gathered between the White House and the Washington Monument.

By falsely insisting that he won the election, Trump repeated many unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and urged the crowd to march down Pennsylvania Avenue toward Congress.

At the Capitol, a mob jumped over barricades and outflanked Capitol police officers, causing the House and Senate to disrupt the debate.

Here are some of the claims made that day, during the congressional session and the chaos that interrupted it:

Statements on Election Results

• "All Vice President Pence has to do is send (electoral college votes) back to the state and recertify, and we become president,"

  Donald Trump.

This is false

.

While there are some theorists who say that the vice president has the power to reject the results of any state, legal scholars from across the political spectrum claim that neither the Constitution nor any law gives that authority to the vice president.

Pence's role is limited to opening the certified results from each state, passing the documents to House and Senate officials, and reading the vote at the end, just as he did.

Senators and representatives can object to the results of a given state, but not the vice president.

Hundreds of supporters of President Donald Trump invaded the US Capitol as congressmen certified Joe Biden's electoral victory on January 6, 2020.Stephanie Keith / Reuters

• "We won. We won resoundingly. This was overwhelming," Donald Trump.

Completely false!

Biden won the presidential election with 306 electoral votes, compared to 232 for Trump.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have certified their votes.

None of the 62 lawsuits Trump and his allies filed after Election Day have shown that alleged fraud affected the election outcome.

Federal agencies and state election officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence of massive fraud.

• "Every time in the last 30 years Democrats have lost a presidential race, they have tried to fight it. After 2000, after 2004, after 2016. After 2004, a senator joined in and forced the same debate, and believe it. Or not, Democrats like Harry Reid, Dick Durbin and Hillary Clinton praised and applauded the ruse. "

  Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican and Senate Majority Leader.

This exaggerates the historical comparison.

While Democrats have filed complaints about particular states, the scale of the recent Republican campaign dwarfs what happened before.

In 2001, about a dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus opposed Florida's controversial results, saying that black voters had been systematically disenfranchised.

No Democratic senators joined the objection, and Vice President Al Gore, who was presiding over the joint session of Congress, ended the challenge.

[The FBI and the police continue to search for the robbers of the Capitol even though they brag about their crime in the media and social networks]

In 2005, similar concerns from black voters sparked a challenge to Ohio's results, backed by one member of the House of Representatives and one of the Senate.

The Senate rejected the objection 74-1.

In 2017, Biden, as vice president, rejected objections from members of the House of Representatives because no senators joined his efforts.

In contrast, this year, more than a dozen Republican senators and more than 130 Republican representatives pledged they would oppose the results in at least three states.

The assault on the Capitol from inside: a supporter of Trump records the violent struggle with the police

Jan. 8, 202 109: 03

• "This election was not really unusually close," 

  Mitch McConnell.

This is true.

Biden's victory wasn't overwhelming, but it was decisive, the numbers show.

Biden's Electoral College victory was exactly the same as Trump's in 2016: Both won states by a total of 306 electoral votes.

Biden's electoral victory is greater than the victory of George W. Bush, who accumulated only 271 in 2000 and 286 in 2004. It is also slightly greater than that of Jimmy Carter in 1976, Richard Nixon in 1968 and John F. Kennedy in 1960.

An even stronger sign of Biden's decisive victory is the popular vote, with which he beat Trump by around 7 million votes.

Biden amassed a wider popular vote margin than any candidate since 1996 except for Obama in 2008, who won by more than 9.5 million votes.

• 39% of Americans, 31% of independents and 17% of Democrats "believe the election was rigged,"

  Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas.

In this case context is missing.

Cruz's statement is based on a specific poll and the total percentage of respondents who were "somewhat" or "very" in agreement with the statement: "I'm concerned the election is rigged."

That doesn't necessarily mean that they thought she had been tampered with.

[Who are the Capitol Raiders?]

The Reuters / Ipsos poll also asked people more directly about their opinion of the election.

The percentage of people who said the elections were "the result of illegal voting or electoral fraud" was much lower than the figures Cruz cited.

• "The 2020 elections were the safest held in modern history,"

  Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California.

This statement is correct.

On November 12, 2020, officials from two committees of the Department of Homeland Security, the Coordination Council of the Electoral Infrastructure Sector and the Government Coordination Council of Electoral Infrastructure that oversees cybersecurity, issued a joint statement that discredits the rampant campaign of Trump disinformation.

Indignation fills the country after violence unleashed by Trump supporters in Congress

Jan. 8, 202102: 01

"The November 3 elections were the safest in the history of the United States," the statement said.

"There is no evidence that any voting system has removed or lost votes, changed votes, or compromised in any way."

• "President Trump and his allies have suffered defeat, a defeat in court after court across the country losing no fewer than 62 legal challenges, and I could add many Republican-appointed judges, some President Trump-appointed made those decisions." , 

  Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York.

Schumer's words are also correct.

The Washington Post reviewed court documents and reported that 86 judges rejected post-election lawsuits filed by Trump or his supporters.

The justices were from various courts, including the United States Supreme Court.

The Post found that 38 judges were appointed by Republicans.

As PolitiFact reported, dozens of lawsuits failed due to errors, jurisdictional problems, or lack of evidence of the widespread voter fraud they alleged.

[Twitter expels Trump: permanently suspends his personal account so that he does not "incite violence again"]

Judge Stephanos Bibas, appointed by Trump to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, said in dismissing a Pennsylvania lawsuit: "Free and fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. The accusations of injustice are serious. Call a Illegal choice doesn't make it one. The charges require specific indictments and then evidence. We don't have any here. "

Claims on the taking of the Capitol

Was it sedition?

Several commentators, including CNN's Jake Tapper, called the mutineers' actions sedition.

Joe Biden also said the Jan.6 actions "border on sedition."

Several legal experts agreed.

Washington DC police with unsheathed weapons try to protect the chamber of the House of Representatives after the violent irruption of pro-Trump protesters.

The definition of seditious conspiracy in federal law is that two or more persons "conspire to overthrow, suppress, or destroy by force the Government of the United States, ... or to forcibly oppose its authority, or by force to prevent, obstruct, or delay the execution of any United States law, or by force to seize, take, or possess any United States property against established authority. "

The law carries a fine or imprisonment of up to 20 years, or both.

[Colin Powell demands that Donald Trump resign after the assault on the Capitol in Washington DC]

"The people who broke into the Capitol building seem to clearly meet the charges to be prosecuted under this provision," said Carlton Larson, a law professor at the University of California-Davis.

James Robenalt, a lawyer with experience in political crises, agreed.

"What we are seeing is sedition," he said.

"All those who are participating and those who conspire are guilty and punishable."

• The people who stormed the Capitol were antifa activists in disguise.

There is no evidence that the Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol were actually or mostly "ANTIFA fascists wearing MAGA caps backwards," as Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, tweeted.

Similar claims appeared on Facebook and in the pro-Trump press.

But video and photographs from the scene show people wearing and waving Trump-branded paraphernalia and flags.

Reporters who covered the events described the crowd as Trump supporters.

The crowd also included supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to reporters present.

Donald Trump announces he will not attend Joe Biden's inauguration

Jan. 8, 202102: 53

• "This morning, President Trump explicitly called for the demonstrations and protests to be peaceful,"

  Rep. Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida:

This needs context.

Gaetz was referencing part of Trump's speech at a rally before Congress met.

Trump used the word "peacefully" when he told his supporters: "I know that everyone here will soon march to the Capitol building to make their voices heard in a peaceful and patriotic way."

But some of Trump's comments are open to interpretation, such as when he told his followers: "You will never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing. "

Repeating the falsehood that states made no effort to verify the adequacy of the votes cast, Trump said: "Republicans have to be tougher. You are not going to have a Republican Party if you don't."

Trump also used fiery rhetoric when speaking to the media saying, "He has become the enemy of the people."

Then he turned around and said, "Republicans constantly fight like a boxer with their hands tied behind their backs."

This article was translated by Andrea López-Cruzado thanks to the FactChat agreement, coordinated by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) with the support of WhatsApp.

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