January 6 United States Capitol attack
Based on Wikipedia: January 6 United States Capitol attack
On January 6, 2021, something unprecedented happened in American history: for the first time ever, a defeated president attempted to stay in power by force. A mob of Donald Trump's supporters stormed the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C., trying to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election.
It didn't work. But the attempt itself marked a dark milestone—the only coup attempt ever directed at the federal government in American history.
What Actually Happened That Day
The violence unfolded over several hours. Around 2,000 to 2,500 people actually entered the Capitol building, according to FBI estimates. They smashed windows, broke down doors, vandalized offices—including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's—and violently clashed with police officers trying to hold them back.
The mob occupied the empty Senate chamber. They rifled through lawmakers' desks. They posed for selfies in stolen riot gear. Meanwhile, federal law enforcement officers defended the evacuated House floor, literally standing between the rioters and the members of Congress who had been rushed to secure locations.
Five people died within 36 hours of the attack. One rioter was shot by Capitol Police. Another died of a drug overdose. Three died of natural causes, including a police officer who suffered a stroke the day after being assaulted by rioters and collapsing at the Capitol. In total, 174 police officers were injured. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months. The physical damage exceeded $2.7 million.
How It Started
The attack was the culmination of a two-month campaign by Trump to overturn his electoral defeat. On November 5, 2020—just two days after the election—Trump began declaring victory and demanding that vote counting stop. What followed was an unprecedented effort to subvert American democracy.
Trump filed sixty lawsuits challenging the results. He took two cases all the way to the Supreme Court. Every single challenge was rejected—either for lack of evidence or because Trump's team had no legal standing to bring the case. His own attorneys concluded there was neither a factual foundation nor any valid legal argument for what they were being asked to do.
When the courts wouldn't cooperate, Trump tried other tactics. He pressured Republican governors, secretaries of state, and state legislatures to simply nullify the results. He tried to get them to replace slates of Biden electors with fake electors pledged to Trump. He demanded investigations into supposed "irregularities" that federal and state officials had already determined didn't exist. He even inquired about invoking martial law to "re-run" the election.
And he repeatedly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to somehow alter the results when Congress met to count the electoral votes on January 6—even though Pence had no constitutional power to do so.
The Call to Action
On December 18, Trump sent out a tweet: "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"
That single tweet set everything in motion. Trump supporters began coordinating online, openly discussing plans to storm the Capitol. Over the next three weeks, there were more than one million social media mentions of storming the Capitol, including explicit calls for violence against members of Congress, Vice President Pence, and the police.
The planning happened in plain sight. On December 28, someone posted a detailed map showing entrances and exits to the Capitol and the underground tunnels connecting it to House and Senate office buildings. Black X's marked where forces would be "ready for action." On December 30, one widely-shared comment read: "I'm thinking it will be literal war on that day. Where we'll storm offices and physically remove and even kill all the D.C. traitors and reclaim the country."
The FBI saw all of this. From December 29 to January 5, the FBI and its field offices warned of armed protests at every state capitol. They reported detailed plans that included violence. Three days before the attack, the Capitol Police intelligence unit circulated a memo warning that Trump supporters saw January 6 as "the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election" and might use violence against "Congress itself."
The Extremist Groups
Two far-right militia groups played central roles in organizing and executing the attack: the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.
The Proud Boys are a neo-fascist organization known for political violence and misogyny. In the weeks before January 6, their leaders were explicit about their intentions. They spent money on paramilitary equipment—concealed tactical vests, radio equipment. On December 29, they told members to be "incognito" on January 6 by not wearing their usual black and yellow uniforms. On December 30, leadership received a document titled "1776 Returns" that called for occupying "crucial buildings" and argued for supporters to "Storm the Winter Palace"—a reference to the Russian Revolution.
On January 3 and 4, Proud Boys leadership explicitly discussed "storming" the Capitol in their communications.
The Oath Keepers are a militia group that recruits current and former military, law enforcement, and first responders. Their founder, Stewart Rhodes, began talking about "civil war" on November 5, just two days after the election. On November 9, he held a members-only online conference where he outlined a plan to stop the transfer of power using force.
The Oath Keepers planned to station a "Quick Reaction Force" with "an arsenal" of weapons in nearby Alexandria, Virginia. They discussed using boats to enter Washington if bridges were closed. On January 3, Rhodes drove to D.C., having spent $6,000 on a rifle and firearms equipment in Texas and $4,500 more in Mississippi on his way.
On January 5, the night before the attack, Proud Boys leaders divided members into teams, distributed radios, and programmed them to specific channels. They ordered members to assemble at 10 a.m. at the Washington Monument. About 100 plainclothes Proud Boys followed those orders and were then led to the Capitol.
The Rally
Trump held a "Save America" rally on the Ellipse, just south of the White House, starting at noon on January 6. Thousands of his supporters had gathered, some of them armed. In his speech, Trump repeated false claims that the election had been "stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats." He told the crowd: "If you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."
As Congress began counting the electoral votes inside the Capitol, thousands of rally attendees walked from the Ellipse to the Capitol building. Hundreds breached police perimeters.
The Violence
What happened next was chaotic and brutal. Rioters overwhelmed police lines. They smashed windows with riot shields, flagpoles, and stolen police equipment. They fought hand-to-hand with officers trying to hold doorways. Some rioters deployed chemical sprays against the police. Others used metal barriers as battering rams.
Capitol Police evacuated and locked down both chambers of Congress and several buildings in the Capitol complex. Members of Congress were rushed to secure locations, some donning gas masks as tear gas filled the hallways.
The mob roamed through the building for hours. They vandalized offices, stole property, and rifled through sensitive documents. Some hunted for specific lawmakers, chanting "Hang Mike Pence" as they searched for the Vice President who had refused Trump's demand to overturn the election results.
Law enforcement also found pipe bombs at both the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters. Molotov cocktails were discovered in a vehicle near the Capitol.
Trump's Response
As the violence unfolded, Trump resisted sending the National Guard to help. It wasn't until that afternoon that he posted a Twitter video—not condemning the violence, but restating his false election claims and telling supporters to "go home in peace."
The Capitol was finally cleared of rioters by mid-evening. Congress reconvened. They worked through the night, and by the morning of January 7, Vice President Pence declared the final electoral vote count: Joe Biden had won.
Only after Trump faced pressure from his cabinet, the threat of being removed from office via the 25th Amendment, and a wave of resignations from administration officials did he concede to an orderly transition of power—in a televised statement, days after the attack.
The Aftermath
One week after the attack, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection. He became the only U.S. president ever to be impeached twice. After Trump left office, the Senate voted 57 to 43 in favor of conviction—but that fell short of the required two-thirds majority, resulting in his acquittal.
Senate Republicans then blocked a bill to create a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the attack. So the House created its own select committee. They held public hearings, voted to subpoena Trump, and recommended that the Department of Justice prosecute him.
A special counsel investigation led to Trump being indicted on four criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the election. All charges were ultimately dismissed following his reelection to the presidency in 2024.
The Prosecutions
Of the 1,424 people charged with federal crimes relating to the attack, 1,010 pled guilty. A total of 1,060 were sentenced, with 64 percent receiving jail time.
Some of the most serious cases involved the extremist group leaders. Members of both the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were convicted of seditious conspiracy—a rare charge that means conspiring to overthrow the government or oppose its authority by force. Enrique Tarrio, chairman of the Proud Boys, received the longest sentence: 22 years in prison.
On January 20, 2025, upon taking office for his second term, President Trump granted clemency to all January 6 rioters—including those convicted of violent offenses and seditious conspiracy.
The Bigger Picture
Numerous scholars, historians, political scientists, and journalists have characterized Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election as an attempted self-coup. The House select committee that investigated the attack concluded it was "the culmination of a plan by Trump to overturn the election."
What makes this different from typical political violence is that it came from the top down. This wasn't just an angry mob acting spontaneously. Trump called them to Washington. Extremist groups spent weeks planning the attack. The president pressured state officials, filed dozens of lawsuits, tried to install fake electors, and when all of that failed, he directed his supporters to march on the Capitol while Congress was in the process of certifying his defeat.
Trump and many elected Republican officials have since promoted what historians call a revisionist history of January 6. They downplay the severity of the violence. They spread conspiracy theories suggesting the attack was a false flag operation or that it was secretly orchestrated by the FBI. They portray those convicted of crimes as political prisoners, hostages, and martyrs rather than people who assaulted police officers and tried to stop the democratic transfer of power.
Why It Matters
The January 6 attack stands alone in American history. The United States has experienced political violence before—assassinations, bombings, riots. But this was the first time a losing presidential candidate attempted to stay in power by preventing the certification of election results, and the first time a mob attacked the Capitol specifically to stop the constitutional process of counting electoral votes.
The peaceful transfer of power had been an unbroken tradition in American democracy since 1797, when John Adams succeeded George Washington. That tradition held even after the bitterly contested election of 1800, after the Civil War, after close elections that went to recounts. January 6, 2021, was the first time that tradition was directly attacked by a sitting president and his supporters.
Whether you view the attack as an insurrection, a riot, a coup attempt, or something else depends partly on definitions and partly on politics. But the basic facts are undisputed: thousands of people violently stormed the Capitol to try to stop Congress from certifying an election their preferred candidate had lost. They failed. But the attempt itself marked a break with centuries of American democratic practice.