Five years ago outside the White House, the outgoing president Donald Trump told a crowd of his supporters to head to the Capitol — “and I'll be there with you” — in protest as Congress was affirming the 2020 election victory for Democrat Joe Biden.
A short time later, the world watched as the seat of US power descended into chaos, and democracy hung in the balance.
On the fifth anniversary of January 6 2021 there is no official event to memorialise what happened that day, when a mob of Trump supporters made its way down Pennsylvania Avenue, battled police at the Capitol barricades and stormed inside, as lawmakers fled. The political parties refuse to agree to a shared history of the events, which were broadcast around the globe. And the official plaque honouring the police who defended the Capitol has never been hung.
Instead, Trump will meet privately with House Republicans at the Kennedy Center, which the president has rebranded to carry his own name, for a policy forum. Democrats will hold a hearing with witnesses to the violence and later gather on the Capitol steps to mark the memory of what happened.
And the former leader of the militant Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, is staging a midday march retracing the rioters' steps from the White House to the Capitol to honour Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt and others who died on January 6.
Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for having orchestrated the January 6 riot, and is among more than 1,500 defendants who saw their charges dropped when Trump issued a sweeping pardon on his return to the White House last year. “This will be a PATRIOTIC and PEACEFUL march. If you have any intention of causing trouble we ask that you stay home,” Tarrio wrote.
The January 6 events, being held inside and outside, carry echoes of the split screen five years ago, as the House and Senate gathered to affirm the election results while the Trump supporters swarmed.
This anniversary unfolds while attention is focused elsewhere, particularly after the US military's abduction of Venezuela's president, Nicolas Maduro, and Trump's plans to take over the country and prop up its vast oil industry, a striking new era of American expansionism.
“These people in the administration, they want to lecture the world about democracy when they're undermining the rule of law at home, as we all will be powerfully reminded,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said on the eve of the anniversary.
The Democratic leadership is reconvening the now defunct January 6 committee to hear from police, elected officials and Americans about what they experienced that day.
Many Republicans reject the narrative that Trump sparked the January 6 attack.
Five people died in the Capitol siege and its aftermath, including Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police trying to climb through a door window near the House chamber, and Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died later. Several law enforcement personnel died later, some by suicide.
The Justice Department indicted Trump on four counts in a conspiracy to defraud voters with his claims of a rigged election in the run-up to the January 6 attack.
Former Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers last month that the riot at the Capitol “does not happen” without Trump. He ended up abandoning the case once Trump was reelected president, adhering to department guidelines against prosecuting a sitting president.
Trump, who never made it to the Capitol that day as he hunkered down at the White House, was impeached by the House on the sole charge of having incited the insurrection. The Senate acquitted him after top GOP senators believed the matter was best left to the courts.
Ahead of the 2024 election, the Supreme Court ruled ex-presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.
