5 years after the historic and damaging assault on the U.S. Capitol, thousands and thousands of {dollars} in damages have been repaired and clean-up has lengthy been accomplished. Most of the bodily accidents have healed. And President Trump’s pardons ended the biggest legal prosecution in American historical past, whereas releasing greater than 1,500 defendants from legal legal responsibility.
What stays is a toxic and lingering resentment over the riot and an ongoing battle to protect the essential information of what transpired on Jan. 6, 2021.
The president and a few of his supporters have accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Division of Justice in opposition to Jan. 6 defendants. Within the course of, Mr. Trump and surrogates have espoused arguments which can be inconsistent with the information of the instances, the timeline of occasions and public statistics from the Capitol siege prosecutions.
In a letter to colleagues final week, Home Democratic Chief Hakeem Jeffries introduced a public assembly, with witness testimony, can be held on Tuesday to rebut claims about Jan. 6. Jeffries’s letter stated the assembly would “expose the election deniers who maintain high-level positions of significance within the government department and element the threats to public security posed by the tons of of violent felons who had been pardoned on the President’s first day in workplace.”
Dan Hodges, a neighborhood Washington, D.C., police officer who was injured by the assault of the mob, stated he’s annoyed by an ongoing “rewriting” of the historical past of Jan. 6.
“5 years in the past I believed: This must be essentially the most videotaped crime in American historical past. It is simply a lot proof. There is not any manner anybody can presumably deny what occurred right here,” Hodges stated in an interview. “However that is precisely what’s taking place.”
Hodges, who spoke with CBS Information as a citizen, separate from his ongoing function as a police officer, additionally stated, “The assault was every part it seemed to be on tv.”
Mr. Trump himself — who has referred to Jan. 6 defendants as “hostages” for years — tried to reframe or rewrite a few of the key problems with the Jan. 6 prosecutions within the hours and days after issuing the pardons. He has claimed many defendants had been really harmless, had been solely accountable for “minor” infractions or had been held in unfairly harsh circumstances.
At a January 2025 information convention, Mr. Trump stated: “These folks have already served years in jail, they usually’ve served them viciously.” He additionally claimed Jan 6 rioters had “served years in jail,” then added that “murderers do not even go to jail on this nation.”
His statements excluded the greater than 1,000 Jan 6 riot defendants who didn’t serve years in custody, and the tons of of pardoned Capitol riot defendants who had not but gone on trial or who served jail phrases for instances by which they pleaded responsible.
Mr. Trump additionally defended his acts of clemency throughout the identical press convention by saying: “It is a disgusting jail. It has been horrible. It is inhumane. It has been a horrible, horrible factor.”
The president didn’t specify which jail to which he was referring. The imprisoned Jan. 6 riot defendants served time in a variety of federal jail services nationwide, all of that are operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. These embrace prisons in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, California, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan and Florida, none of which has been singled out as “inhumane” by the jail bureau, which Trump now oversees.
Though the native Washington, D.C., jail acquired criticism for its circumstances in 2021 and 2022, when some Jan. 6 defendants had been quickly held there, the jail is just not a jail. Nor was the jail used for individuals who had been sentenced to federal jail phrases.
In a Fox Information interview simply days after returning to workplace, Mr. Trump justified his pardons by arguing, “most people had been completely harmless,” which runs counter to many defendants’ determination to plead responsible and admit to crimes. His assertion can also be belied by the proper trial report secured by prosecutors, who obtained convictions in 100% of the jury trials held for Jan. 6 defendants who pleaded not responsible.
Throughout that interview, Mr. Trump additionally defended his pardoning of violent rioters who assaulted police, saying: “They had been very minor incidents.”
Based on courtroom information reviewed by CBS Information, the accidents to police included violent assaults with a collection of makeshift weapons, together with bats, poles, bear spray, sticks, chemical compounds and fists. Round 140 cops had been injured, with some going through cracked ribs, smashed spinal disks and mind accidents, in accordance with the union representing Capitol Law enforcement officials. A number of cops additionally died by suicide within the weeks after the siege.
In an October 2025 social media put up, Mr. Trump claimed the Biden administration had positioned 274 FBI brokers among the many crowd on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, despite the fact that Biden had not but been sworn in as president. Baseless claims that the riot was orchestrated by the FBI have circulated for years, although Trump-nominated FBI Director Kash Patel has stated the 274 brokers had been deployed to the Capitol for “crowd management.”
Some riot defendants have characterised the prosecutions as “weaponization” of the federal authorities by the Justice Division. Others have used the time period “staged,” “pretend” or “fed-surrection” to allege that the violent riot didn’t occur because it appeared to on dwell tv throughout America.
“Are we not speculated to imagine what we noticed with our personal eyes?,” requested Rep. Bennie Thompson, a longtime Home Democrat from Mississippi who chaired the previous Home January sixth Choose Committee, which aimed to dispel myths and faux claims in regards to the riot. “We’ve to maintain repeating it, as a result of these people with bigger microphones hold calling it ‘pretend information.'”
The White Home declined to touch upon remarks Mr. Trump has made about Jan. 6 or these concerned, however spokeswoman Abigail Jackson stated in a press release: “The media’s continued obsession with January 6 is among the many causes belief within the press is at historic lows — they are not masking points that the American folks really care about. President Trump was resoundingly reelected to enact an agenda based mostly on securing the border, driving down crime, and restarting our economic system — the President is delivering.”
Home Democrats are anticipated to name quite a lot of the police victims of the siege as public witnesses at their Tuesday public assembly. A number of congressional staffers aware of the matter advised CBS Information they anticipate Democrats to difficulty public statements Monday and Tuesday to bolster the information of the Jan. 6 siege, amid Mr. Trump’s claims minimizing the riot.
Home Speaker Mike Johnson’s workplace didn’t reply to requests for remark about Democrats’ deliberate public assembly or about plans for any formal occasions to mark the siege.
Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, known as Hodges to testify at an October 2025 listening to on political violence. Welch stated he needed the officer’s testimony to be public to dispel false narratives about Jan. 6. A number of conservatives additionally testified on the listening to, throughout which Republican lawmakers highlighted acts of political violence and threats in opposition to Mr. Trump and different right-leaning public figures.
“There is a course of to rewrite what occurred on January 6 and primarily erase it,” Welch advised CBS Information. “And that is incorrect. They’re actually within the means of re-writing it.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who beforehand chaired a Senate committee that performed a bipartisan investigation into safety failures on Jan. 6, advised CBS Information, “Congress and Vice President Pence did our job that day: democracy prevailed.”
“Whereas now we have come collectively on a bipartisan foundation to strengthen our electoral course of, the President’s pardons and makes an attempt to rewrite historical past are an insult to regulation enforcement and undermine our democracy,” Klobuchar stated.
