US Congress certifies Donald Trump election victory for Jan 20 inauguration

The US Congress formally certified Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s November election victory over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, clearing the way for him to be sworn in on January 20.

The certification of the election results on Monday in the 50 states and the District of Columbia was accomplished in a brief, formal ceremony during a joint session of the House of Representatives and Senate.

It was presided over by Harris, acting in her vice-presidential role as president of the Senate.

The quadrennial ritual stood in sharp contrast to four years ago when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in a failed bid to block the certification of then-president Trump’s 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden.

Trump continues to falsely claim that his 2020 defeat was the result of widespread fraud and had warned throughout his 2024 campaign that he harboured similar concerns until his Nov 5 defeat of Harris.

“Congress certifies our great election victory today — a big moment in history. MAGA!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

The joint session of Congress proceeded even as a winter storm hovered over the nation’s capital, dropping about 15 centimetres of snow and snarling travel.

The final certification backed up preliminary findings that Trump won 312 Electoral College votes to Harris’s 226.

Republicans control White House, Congress

Republicans also captured a majority in the US Senate and held a narrow edge in the House in November’s election, which will give Trump the party support he needs to implement his planned agenda of tax cuts and a crackdown on immigrants living in the country illegally.

Democrats did not try to block the certification of Trump’s victory.

“We must renew our commitment to safeguarding American democracy,” No. 2 House Democrat Katherine Clark said in a statement earlier in the day.

“As elected leaders, our loyalty must be to the Constitution, first and always. We are here to honour the will of the people and the rule of law.”

Security inside and outside the Capitol was heightened in preparation for the certification and was expected to remain in place through Trump’s swearing-in.

The Capitol grounds were ringed by metal fences hundreds of yards from the US Capitol, and accessible only via checkpoints guarded by uniformed police officers.

Convoys of black police vehicles were on hand, led by a 10-wheel Baltimore police mobile command centre. New York Police Department reinforcements were also patrolling the area.

Inside, extra teams of uniformed US Capitol Police officers were checking IDs at entrance sites, including doors and underground tunnels, leading to the House and Senate chambers.

Trump has said he plans to pardon some of the more than 1,500 people charged with taking part in the Jan 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, when a mob fought with police, smashing its way in through windows and doors and chanting, “Hang Mike Pence,” referring to Trump’s then-vice president, in a failed bid to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.

In the 2021 melee at the Capitol, rioters surged past police barricades, assaulting about 140 officers and causing more than $2.8 million in damage. Multiple police officers who battled protesters died in the weeks that followed, some by suicide.

As a result of that day’s violence, Congress passed legislation late in 2022 bolstering guardrails to ensure that the certification process is administered in a legal manner.

Many of these changes were directly in response to Trump’s actions leading up to and including Jan 6, 2021. For example, the new law asserts that the vice president’s role is largely ceremonial.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Biden slammed Trump’s allies for downplaying the violence of 2021 and urged Americans to be “proud that our democracy withstood this assault”.

“We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago,” he said.

“An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite — even erase — the history of that day.”

Trump was impeached for inciting the 2021 insurrection after delivering a raucous speech outside the White House early in the day, demanding that supporters march on the Capitol and “fight like hell”.

Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has vowed to investigate the House committee that probed the riot and found that Trump had instigated it after the failure of a host of other schemes to overturn an election he knew he had lost.

Meanwhile, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement the Justice Department had over the last four years charged more than 1,500 people suspected of involvement in the “unprecedented attack on a cornerstone of our system of government”.

The certification was designated for the first time as a national security special event, with 500 National Guard personnel on standby.

But the federal government and Washington public schools were closed today.

“Four years ago today, our nation watched in horror as a terrorist mob stormed the Capitol grounds and desecrated our temple of Democracy in a violent attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power,” Democrat Nancy Pelosi, who was House speaker at the time of the rebellion, said in a statement.

“The January 6th insurrection shook our Republic to its core — and left behind physical scars and emotional trauma on members of our congressional community and our country that endure to this day.”