Morning Rundown: Congress to certify Trump’s win on Jan. 6 anniversary, winter storm disrupts travel, and the Golden Globes’ biggest moments
Profile
Sections
Local
tv
Featured
More From NBC
Follow NBC News
news Alerts
There are no new alerts at this time
WASHINGTON — Four years after supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, members of Congress will be under heavy security Monday as they certify Trump’s 2024 election victory, ensuring the first president to face federal felony criminal charges will return to the White House in two weeks.
On Jan. 20, Trump will walk through the lower west tunnel — the location of some of the worst violence of the attack on Jan. 6, 2021 — to take the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States. Trump, who himself faced four felony charges in connection with Jan. 6 and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, has vowed to pardon some untold number of Jan. 6 defendants when he takes office. (Special counsel Jack Smith dropped the charges against Trump after his election, with his team writing that while it stood by the case and while the evidence against Trump was strong, the dismissal was necessary in light of the Justice Department’s long-standing position that the Constitution forbids prosecuting a sitting president.)
But details of Trump’s plans are uncertain even as the final days of President Joe Biden’s term tick away and even as Jan. 6 defendants involved in the Jan. 6 investigation agree it is clear Trump is not up to speed on the details of the cases.
“Even people familiar with the day-to-day J6 prosecution, it’s difficult to keep up with what is happening,” a Trump ally previously told NBC News, adding that Trump needed to develop a “very succinct and compelling argument for these pardons.”
More than 1,580 defendants have been charged and about 1,270 have been convicted in a sprawling investigation that has resulted in more than 660 prison sentences, according to statistics released Monday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. Prison sentences have ranged from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison, a sentence imposed on former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy. Hundreds more Jan. 6 defendants have been sentenced to probation, most of whom were convicted of low-level offenses like unlawful parading.
Back in September, before Trump won the election, the federal government declared the Electoral College certification a National Special Security Event, heightening the level of security at the Capitol. While Trump’s win virtually eliminated the threat that a mob would storm the Capitol on Monday, the government went ahead with the original plan and put severe security measures in place that will remain as law enforcement agencies deal with major coming events, including events honoring the late President Jimmy Carter as he lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda, as well as Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.
On Saturday morning, about 36 hours before a snowstorm was expected to hit Washington, workers at the Capitol were placing additional layers of high fencing around the Capitol grounds, including on the west front, which Trump supporters took over during the Capitol attack four years ago.
Biden implored lawmakers Sunday to speak truthfully about the Capitol attack, in which more than 140 police officers were injured and after which some law enforcement officers died, at an event with newly elected Democratic lawmakers.
“Now, it’s your duty to tell the truth, to remember what happened and not let Jan. 6th be rewritten,” Biden said. “It’s one of the toughest days in American history.”
Trump, like many of his fellow Republicans, underwent a massive shift in his rhetoric since the Jan. 6 attack, from calling the Capitol breach a “heinous attack” in 2021 to describing it as a “day of love” last year. The effort to rewrite the history of Jan. 6 has been aided by numerous conspiracy theories that have been propagated by Trump allies on Capitol Hill, leading a federal judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan to warn about the “preposterous” rhetoric used by many prominent Republican politicians and express shock that such “meritless justifications of criminal activity” had gone mainstream.
“The bedrock assumption of our judicial system is that truth and justice, law and order, are values of paramount importance and are worth protecting even at great expense,” U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said at a separate sentencing hearing last month. “This proceeding and others like it show that our system of justice is always working, no matter the political winds of the day. That is a message worth sending.”
Inside the Capitol last week, there were no signs of a plaque that was supposed to have been installed on the west side of the Capitol to honor the law enforcement officers who protected lawmakers and the building during the Jan. 6 assault.
Trump, who chose a Jan. 6 conspiracy theorist, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to be his attorney general until Gaetz withdrew amid sexual misconduct allegations involving an underage girl, has used outdated talking points in discussing Jan. 6 cases and said members of the House Jan. 6 committee “should go to jail.” (Gaetz has denied the allegations.) Trump said that Jan. 6 defendants were subject to “a very nasty system” and that he would be “acting very quickly” on Jan. 6 pardons.
Trump has said there “may be some exceptions” to his Jan. 6 pardons “if somebody was radical, crazy,” but he did not rule out pardoning people who had admitted assaulting police officers. The Trump transition team has said pardons will be issued “case by case,” but Trump has said the “vast majority” of Jan. 6 defendants should not be in jail. The U.S. attorney’s office said that just eight pretrial defendants remain in the jail in Washington, while all the other incarcerated Jan. 6 defendants are serving the sentences imposed after their convictions, which came after they confessed to their crimes in court and pleaded guilty or when juries or judges found evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that they had committed the crimes they were charged with.
While more misdemeanor cases against low-level Jan. 6 defendants seem unlikely in a Trump administration, it is not yet clear how pending cases against people accused of assaulting law enforcement officers will be handled. Online “sedition hunters” who have already aided the FBI in hundreds of Jan. 6 cases say more than 200 people suspected of committing assaults on law enforcement officers or members of the media have been identified but have not yet been arrested. Among them are more than 60 people whose images are featured on the FBI website that lists them as wanted for assault.
Ryan J. Reilly is a justice reporter for NBC News.
© 2025 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
