How Jan. 6 was remembered — and rewritten — on its 5th anniversary

Five years ago, Ryan Samsel ignited the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol grounds when he charged through a police barricade, injuring a police officer in the process.

Samsel returned to the site Tuesday, part of a group of fellow mob members who retraced the route Trump supporters took from the Ellipse to the foot of the Capitol in 2021. They marched to celebrate their blanket pardon by President Donald Trump and attempt to reclaim Jan. 6 as a date of triumph, not tragedy.

The march was the backdrop to a day marked by partisan sparring over a missing plaque and an endorsement by the White House of a torrent of conspiracy theories and lies about the attack and Trump’s pressure campaign to subvert the 2020 election.

A new White House website, with ominous black-and-white images of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and members of the Jan. 6 select committee, offered an alternate and largely false narrative of events at the Capitol that day — one that forcefully denied Trump’s role in stoking the riot and labeled those who stormed the Capitol “patriotic Americans.”

Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson eschewed calls to mount a bronze marker legally mandated by Congress that would serve to honor those who protected the Capitol from the worst attack it had seen since the war of 1812.

“He's trying to cover up for the fact that Republicans continue to disrespect those brave men and women of the Capitol Police department who defended our country on Jan. 6,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a brief interview.

Democrats held a mock hearing to mark the anniversary of the event featuring firsthand witnesses to the violence that day. Their testimony underscored the increasingly diverging narratives that continue to define the historic attack.

Outside the Capitol, the former Jan. 6 defendants rallied without support from sitting lawmakers. Their most vocal champion, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, had resigned from Congress a day earlier. She was mentioned regretfully by some members of the crowd who soured on her after she began openly feuding with Trump last year.

Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York exchanged tense words with Jake Lang — who was pardoned of numerous assault charges against police on Jan. 6 — from behind a line of officers as he walked past the participants as they prepared to lay flowers on the Capitol steps.

Members of the march chanted, “Whose house? Our house!” — an echo of the rally cries from five years earlier. Mikki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt — the woman who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer outside the House chamber — described Jan. 6 as the day Congress “let the American people down.”

Inside the Capitol, the missing plaque became a stand-in for the swirling controversy about how the infamous day will be remembered.

Johnson said in a Monday statement that the plaque, which was authorized by a law passed in March 2022, was “not implementable" and that Democratic-led proposals for it were also not an option.

That echoes arguments made by the Justice Department, which is trying to dismiss a federal lawsuit filed by two Capitol Police officers seeking to compel the plaque’s mounting.

The law authorizing the marker requires it to list the names of all law enforcement officers who participated in the defense of the Capitol. DOJ lawyers argue in court filings that the plaque that has been made does not comply with the law because it lists the departments who responded — not the individual officers. A deputy to the Architect of the Capitol said in a separate court declaration that a plaque listing the officers’ names has not been made.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) called Johnson’s claim that the plaque does not comply with the law “ridiculous, and so is he.” Many Hill Democrats have placed replicas of the plaque outside their offices as Johnson refuses to mount the genuine article.

In one effort to resolve the issue, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Tuesday he would seek to change the law to accommodate the existing plaque, but it was not immediately clear if he would be able to garner the unanimous support necessary to quickly act.

Testifying at the Democratic shadow hearing, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger — who served as a Republican on the House’s previous Jan. 6 panel — said he was “convinced” the plaque would be put on display by next January, when the next Congress begins.

“I’ll humbly suggest maybe you can double the size of it by then,” he said.

The Democrats’ event was held in the basement after the speaker’s office declined to allow them to use a dedicated hearing room or the larger auditorium in the Capitol Visitor Center, according to a person granted anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. Johnson’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the claim.

No sitting House Republicans attended. They spent their day across town holding a policy retreat at the Kennedy Center, where Trump addressed them and brought up the events of Jan. 6 without prompting. He complained that the media failed to report how he told people to march "peacefully and patriotically" to the Capitol that day and renewed old gripes against Pelosi, whom he blamed for rejecting National Guard troops to guard the Capitol — even though only Trump could call up the Guard.

The new White House website also accuses Pelosi and members of the Jan. 6 select committee of maneuvering to unfairly blame Trump for the riot. Not mentioned are any of the many comments critical of Trump from inside the GOP at the time nor the 10 House and seven Senate Republicans who voted against him in subsequent impeachment proceedings.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune sidestepped a question Tuesday about the website’s claim that Capitol Police helped instigate the riot. He told reporters he hadn’t seen the site and offered general praise for the force.

The history of Jan. 6 will remain a live issue on Capitol Hill for the remainder of the current Congress, with a new Republican-led panel investigating the attack and the work of the prior Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee.

Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), who serves on the new panel, attacked those on the Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee for seeking to malign Trump.

“Their Select Committee wasn’t about transparency or the truth; it was political theatre,” he said in a statement. “My colleagues and I are focused on uncovering the truth and following the facts wherever they lead.”