When the Jan. 6 attack unfolded in Washington five years ago, many people believed that President Trump was in big trouble and could even land in prison.
Instead, he is entering the second year of another White House term and is rewriting the narrative around the Capitol clash that shocked the world.
Mr. Trump has pardoned more than 1,000 people of offenses related to the assault while commuting the sentences of 14 others, hoping to recast the rioters as victims of overzealous prosecution after what he still characterizes as the “rigged” election of 2020.
His Republican allies on Capitol Hill have launched a new probe of the Democrat-led investigation that faulted Mr. Trump’s action for the assault, this time focusing instead on potential security failures.
Five years on, Mr. Trump has largely neutralized Jan. 6 as a political liability. Americans are mostly focused on other topics, such as immigration and economic worries that propelled Mr. Trump back to the White House in 2024.
“My sense is that only a small percentage of Americans would hold up as valorous what actually happened on Jan. 6 — a violent invasion of the Capitol building, the desecration of civic monuments, leading to multiple deaths of law enforcement officers and a near attack on an eminently decent and patriotic vice president,” said Russell Riley, professor and co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program the the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
“But the ugliness of five years ago bears little now on the cost of rent or opportunities for decent employment,” he said. “It is that reality that permits President Trump to reconstruct the history of that day largely with impunity.”
Democrats from the former select committee will reconvene on Tuesday for a special hearing that focuses on “ongoing threats to free and fair elections” and new crimes committed by persons who were pardoned for Jan. 6 offenses.
So far, Mr. Trump and the White House have not announced any plans to acknowledge the Jan. 6 anniversary.
“President Trump is focused on issues the American people actually care about,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said. “The Trump administration is securing historic investments for domestic job growth, deporting criminal illegal aliens, driving down violent crime, restoring the economy, and more.”
Some developments related to Jan. 6 cut across party lines. Both the Democratic and Republican national committees were targeted with pipe bombs at their Washington headquarters around the time of the Jan. 6 attack.
The bombs did not detonate and were discovered during the afternoon when rioters stormed the Capitol, but investigators only recently arrested a suspect.
Prosecutors say the suspect, Brian J. Cole Jr., told investigators he was frustrated by the possibility that the 2020 election had been tampered with and targeted both parties because they were “in charge.”
He is being detained pending trial.
Mr. Trump spent the weeks following his November 2020 loss to Joseph R. Biden complaining about alleged fraud and urging states to reexamine their tallies.
He gave a fiery speech on the White House Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, in which he vowed to “never concede” the election, and he urged Vice President Mike Pence to block certification of the election, sending the issue back to the states.
Mr. Trump told supporters to head down to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically.”
But all hell broke loose on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue when lawmakers attempted to begin certification. Rioters clashed with police and breached the Capitol.
Lawmakers were taken to secure locations as rioters filtered through the Capitol.
The attack led to surreal scenes of protesters rummaging through lawmakers’ things and a deadly clash, when a Capitol Police officer shot Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran among those who were trying to force their way through a broken window near the House speaker’s lobby.
The Biden Justice Department and D.C. Metropolitan Police Department cleared the officer’s actions as justified.
But in May, Mr. Trump’s Justice Department approved a nearly $5 million settlement in the wrongful death suit brought by the family.
Mr. Trump faced a political low point in 2021 and 2022, staring at lagging relevance and the likelihood of criminal prosecution. His Gallup favorability had hit a personal low of 34% when he left office following the Jan. 6 attack.
Yet he managed to turn his indictments into a rallying cry for his base. Then, he used dissatisfaction with an aging President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris — who slapped together a presidential campaign on short notice – to win a second term.
Democrats hammered Mr. Trump as a threat to democracy while the GOP standard-bearer focused on the economy and price inflation. Pocketbook concerns won out, and Mr. Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025, inside the building that his supporters had stormed four years earlier.
“Trump’s goal was never simply to rewrite the narrative. It was to return to office. In that he succeeded,” said Henry W. Brands, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.
The government’s approach to Jan. 6 changed immediately.
Mr. Trump had his Department of Justice quash an indictment from special counsel Jack Smith that had accused Mr. Trump and his allies of conspiring against American voters after the 2020 election.
Mr. Smith told lawmakers in closed-door testimony last month that the attack on the Capitol “does not happen” without Mr. Trump, characterizing the president as the “most culpable and most responsible person” for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“These crimes were committed for his benefit. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit,” Mr. Smith said.
Mr. Trump also fulfilled his pardon pledge to pardon Jan. 6 offenders, who complained of ill treatment in D.C. jail while their cases languished.
“This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation,” Mr. Trump said in his day-one order.
Mr. Trump also triumphed, politically, over those who chose to impeach him during Jan. 6-related proceedings or tried to convict him in the Senate.
Only two House Republicans who voted to impeach, Reps. David Valadao of California and Dan Newhouse of Washington, remain in the House, with Mr. Newhouse set to retire instead of seeking reelection.
Only three of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict – Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana – remain in the Senate.
Democrats say Americans must remember the Jan. 6 tragedy and the bravery of officers, including Brian Sicknick, who died of a stroke the day after being assaulted during the riot. Four other officers died by suicide within several months of the attack.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat, marked the fifth anniversary of the attack by pointing to the “heroic” actions of Capitol Police officers, many of whom were injured in the attack.
“In the years since that disgraceful day, far-right Republicans in Congress have repeatedly attempted to rewrite history and whitewash the events of January 6th. Our country has been indelibly scarred,” Mr. Jeffries wrote in a Dec. 29 letter to fellow lawmakers.
Capitol Hill Republicans are still working to reshape views of what happened on Jan. 6, 2021.
During the Biden administration, House Democrats formed a House select committee to investigate the events of Jan. 6, 2021.
Panel hearings featured a parade of legal experts and former administration officials who gave unflattering testimony about Mr. Trump’s actions following his 2020 loss or described their efforts to convince Mr. Trump that he’d run out of legal options to reverse the outcome.
Mr. Trump and his GOP allies said the panel cherry-picked witnesses and evidence, and some Democrats worried the Capitol Hill process delayed the prosecution of Mr. Trump, giving eventual indictments a partisan veneer and grist for Mr. Trump’s comeback.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, Georgia Republican, announced in September that he would lead a new panel under the House Judiciary Committee to focus on security issues around the event.
“Republicans will continue to pursue the facts in an objective manner no matter where they lead,” Mr. Loudermilk said. “The American people deserve a complete and accurate account of the security failures that occurred on January 6, so this level of security failure never happens again.”
Mr. Loudermilk’s office said the committee is “up and running” and sent letters to about a dozen federal agencies and private companies for information regarding Jan. 6.
Its goal is to ensure that security failures that occurred on that day never happen again and figure out if intelligence ahead of the Capitol assault was correctly interpreted and disseminated.
It also wants to find “missing” data from the Democrats’ committee.
Mr. Brands said Mr. Trump got his second term, so efforts by his GOP allies amount to a political distraction from voters’ worries about the economy, a potential war with Venezuela or other matters.
“Trump got what he wanted, with reelection,” he said. “The rest of the GOP has to worry about future elections.”
Mr. Riley said he does not expect the new committee to sway public opinion that much.
“There will undoubtedly be news cycles when disclosures excite those on the right or the left. But it is unlikely to create any new heroes — or demons,” he said. “There is too much film on this — and too many court records — to rewrite significantly the history of that date.”
But Craig Shirley, a presidential historian and biographer of President Ronald Reagan, said Republicans are leaning into an image of being the “pro-security” party ahead of the midterms.
He does not think the GOP is courting risk in dredging up the Jan. 6 attacks because the focus has shifted off the rioters and onto Democrats who investigated Mr. Trump and his supporters.
“You were seen as an instigator five years ago, and now you’re a victim,” Mr. Shirley said. “It’s an astonishing turnaround. I think that’s a good example of how the culture has changed.”
