Political Division: Donald Trump and the Capitol Riots
As the 2020 election approached, President Donald Trump began to sow doubts about the upcoming election, doing so as early as March of 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning. He told audiences that that the upcoming election would be rigged and that the expected widespread use of mail balloting would produce massive election fraud. In July, President Trump floated the possibility of delaying the election. In August of 2021, after the House of Representatives voted for a $25 billion grant to the U.S. Postal Service for the expected surge in mail voting, Trump vetoed funding, giving as his reason for doing so his prediction that allowing the grant would enable an increase in voting by mail and with it increased voter fraud. When asked if he would accept the results of the election and commit to a peaceful transition of power if he lost, he repeatedly refused to answer the question. Much of his 2020 campaign speeches and campaign advertisements focused on crime, claiming that cities would descend into lawlessness if his opponent Joe Biden won the presidency.
Biden won the election on November 3, and the final official vote count gave Biden 81.3 million votes (51.3 percent) to Trump's 74.2 million (46.8 percent) and 306 Electoral College votes to Trump's 232. In the aftermath of the election, Trump refused to admit defeat and accused Democrats of attempting to steal the election. At 2 a.m. the morning after the election, with the results still unclear, Trump declared victory. When Biden was projected the winner days later, Trump said, "this election is far from over" and alleged that election fraud had occurred. Trump supporters filed numerous legal challenges to the results, which were rejected by approximately 86 judges in both the state and federal courts. Many of those federal judges had been appointed by President Trump. When Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) director Chris Krebs contradicted Trump's fraud allegations, Trump dismissed him on November 17, 2021.
On December 11, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case from the Texas attorney general that asked the court to overturn the election results in four states won by Biden. But defeats in courts did not cause the President from backing down on his allegations of a stolen election. He directed government officials not to cooperate in Biden's presidential transition. When the administrator of the General Services Administration declared Biden the "apparent winner" of the election, allowing the disbursement of transition resources to his team, President Trump continued to refuse to formally concede defeat.
The Electoral College formalized Biden's victory on December 14. From November to January, Trump continued in his efforts to overturn the results of the election. He personally lobbied various Republican local and state office-holders, Republican state and federal legislators, the Justice Department, and even Vice President Mike Pence, to reject the results of the election. He called for actions such as replacing presidential electors, and requested Georgia officials to "find" votes and announce a "recalculated" result. Subsequently, on February 10, 2021, Georgia prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Trump's alleged efforts to subvert the election in Georgia.
According to reports from Newsweek and the Washington Post, in December 2020, the Pentagon was on red alert, and ranking officers had discussed what they would do if President Trump decided to declare martial law. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and CIA director Gina Haspel became concerned about the threat of a possible coup attempt or military action against China or Iran. Milley, Haspel and NSA director Paul Nakasone agreed to monitor developments closely.
On January 6, 2021, while congressional certification of the presidential election results was taking place in the United States Capitol, Trump held a rally nearby at the Ellipse, where he called for the election result to be overturned and urged his supporters to "take back our country" by marching to the Capitol to "show strength" and "fight like hell". He spoke at noon that day and by 12:30 p.m., rally attendees had gathered outside the Capitol. At 1 p.m, members of the group of assembled persons pushed past police barriers onto Capitol grounds. Trump's speech ended at 1:10 p.m. Many more supporters marched to the Capitol, joining the crowd there. Around 2:15 p.m. the mob broke into the Capitol building, interrupting certification and causing the evacuation of Congress. The group had erected a mock gallows on the grounds said to be intended for Vice-President Pence because of his cooperation with the certification process. During the riot, President Trump posted messages on Twitter and Facebook. At 6 p.m, he urged those present "go home with love & in peace", calling them "great patriots" and "very special". Congress reconvened later in the day and confirmed the Biden election win in the early hours of the following morning. In the rioting five people died, including a Capitol Police officer.
On January 11, 2021, an article of impeachment charging Trump with incitement of insurrection against the U.S. government was introduced to the House. The House voted 232-197 to impeach Trump on January 13, making him the first U.S. President and the first officeholder to be impeached twice. The impeachment was the most rapid in history, and was followed an unsuccessful bipartisan effort to strip Trump of his powers and duties via Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. Ten Republicans voted for impeachment-the most members of a party ever to vote to impeach a president of their own party.
Biden was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2021. President Trump did not attend President Biden's inauguration. He left Washington for Florida hours before
On February 13, following a five-day Senate trial, Trump was acquitted when the Senate voted 57-43 for conviction, falling ten votes short of the two-thirds majority required to convict. Seven Republicans joined all Democrat senators in voting to convict. Most Republicans voted to acquit Trump, with some holding him responsible for the rioting, but felt the Senate did not have jurisdiction over former presidents. Republican senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said Trump was "practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day" but "constitutionally not eligible for conviction".
After his term ended, Trump went to live at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida where, in accordance with the Former Presidents Act, he set up an office to handle his post-presidential activities. Since leaving the presidency, Trump has been the subject of several probes into both his business dealings and his actions during the presidency. The New York State Attorney General's Office is conducting civil and criminal investigations into Trump's business activities, in conjunction with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. By May 2021, a special grand jury was considering indictments and on July 1, 2021, New York prosecutors charged the Trump Organization with a "15 year 'scheme to defraud' the government". The organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, was arraigned on grand larceny, tax fraud, and other charges.
On June 6, 2021, Trump resumed his campaign-style rallies with an 85-minute speech at the annual North Carolina Republican Party convention. On June 26, he held his first public rally since the January 6 rally that preceded the riot at the Capitol. Trump has held rallies in key states, including an October 2021 gathering in Iowa, where he told voters "We're going to take America back." He was critical of the Republicans who voted in factor of the Biden administration's Infrastructure Bill, calling them RINOs (Republicans In Name Only.) In a statement issued after passage of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, he said: "Very sad that the RINOs in the House and Senate gave Biden and Democrats a victory on the 'Non-Infrastructure' Bill. All Republicans who voted for Democrat longevity should be ashamed of themselves."
Trump continued fundraising, raising more than twice as much as the Republican Party itself. Much of his rhetoric has been about the people in charge of elections and how elections are run. In the 2022 midterm elections he endorsed over 200 candidates for various offices, most of whom supported his claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. He registered a new company in February 2021, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), to provide "social networking services" to "customers in the United States". In October 2021, Trump announced the planned merger of TMTG with Digital World Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). A main backer of the SPAC is China-based financier ARC Group, who was reportedly involved in setting up the proposed merger. The transaction is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In February 2022, TMTG launched Truth Social, a Twitter-like social media platform.
In February 2021, the district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, announced a criminal probe into President Trump's phone calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The New York State Attorney General's Office is conducting criminal investigations into Trump's business activities in conjunction with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. In May 2021, a special grand jury was considering indictments, and in July 2021, New York prosecutors charged the Trump Organization with a "15 year 'scheme to defraud' the government". The organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, was arraigned on grand larceny, tax fraud, and other charges. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 criminal charges on August 18, 2022. As part of the plea agreement, he agreed to testify against The Trump Organization at trial and to pay approximately $2 million in back taxes, interest and penalties and waive any right to appeal.
In December 2021, the New York State Attorney General's office subpoenaed Trump to produce documents relating to his business. On April 25, 2022, New York state judge Arthur Engoron held Trump in contempt of court for failing to comply with the subpoena. He imposed a fine of $10,000 per day until compliance. Trump was deposed in August and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times. In September 2022, the Attorney General of New York filed a civil fraud case against Trump, his three oldest children, and the Trump Organization.
When President Trump left the White House in January 2021, he took government documents and material with him to his Mar-a-Lago estate. By May 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the federal agency that preserves government records asked his office to locate a number of documents and return them. In January 2022, they retrieved 15 boxes of White House records from Mar-a-Lago. NARA later informed the Department of Justice that some of the retrieved documents were classified material. The Justice Department began an investigation in April 2022 and convened a grand jury. The Justice Department sent President Trump a subpoena for additional material on May 11. On June 3, Justice Department officials visited Mar-a-Lago and received some classified documents from Trump's lawyers. One of the lawyers signed a statement affirming that all material marked as classified had been returned to the government. Later that month an additional subpoena was sent requesting surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, which was provided.
On August 8, 2022, FBI agents searched Trump's residence, office, and storage areas at Mar-a-Lago to recover government documents and material Trump had taken with him when he left office in violation of the Presidential Records Act, reportedly including some related to nuclear weapons. The search warrant, authorized by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and approved by a federal magistrate judge, and the written inventory of the seized items were made public on August 12. The text of the search warrant indicates an investigation of potential violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice laws. The items taken in the search included 11 sets of classified documents, four of them tagged as "top secret" and one as "top secret/SCI", the highest level of classification.
On November 18, 2022, Attorney-General Garland appointed a special counsel, federal prosecutor Jack Smith, to oversee the federal criminal investigations into President Trump retaining government property at Mar-a-Lago and examining Trump's role in the events leading up to the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
On November 15, 2022, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president in a speech to supporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. His announcement received wide media coverage and a mixed response from both Democrats and Republicans. Some Democrats see the former president as an easy opponent to defeat, while others are concerned about the negative effects his candidacy will have on American democracy. Some Republicans, mostly Trump loyalists, welcomed the announcement, while others opposed it, noting how poorly many of Trump's hand-picked candidates fared in the recent mid-term elections.
As of today, Donald Trump enjoys a significant lead in polling for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. According to RealClearPolitics and their aggregare polling data, Trump has a 47.5% lead over his closest opponent.
Biden won the election on November 3, and the final official vote count gave Biden 81.3 million votes (51.3 percent) to Trump's 74.2 million (46.8 percent) and 306 Electoral College votes to Trump's 232. In the aftermath of the election, Trump refused to admit defeat and accused Democrats of attempting to steal the election. At 2 a.m. the morning after the election, with the results still unclear, Trump declared victory. When Biden was projected the winner days later, Trump said, "this election is far from over" and alleged that election fraud had occurred. Trump supporters filed numerous legal challenges to the results, which were rejected by approximately 86 judges in both the state and federal courts. Many of those federal judges had been appointed by President Trump. When Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) director Chris Krebs contradicted Trump's fraud allegations, Trump dismissed him on November 17, 2021.
On December 11, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case from the Texas attorney general that asked the court to overturn the election results in four states won by Biden. But defeats in courts did not cause the President from backing down on his allegations of a stolen election. He directed government officials not to cooperate in Biden's presidential transition. When the administrator of the General Services Administration declared Biden the "apparent winner" of the election, allowing the disbursement of transition resources to his team, President Trump continued to refuse to formally concede defeat.
The Electoral College formalized Biden's victory on December 14. From November to January, Trump continued in his efforts to overturn the results of the election. He personally lobbied various Republican local and state office-holders, Republican state and federal legislators, the Justice Department, and even Vice President Mike Pence, to reject the results of the election. He called for actions such as replacing presidential electors, and requested Georgia officials to "find" votes and announce a "recalculated" result. Subsequently, on February 10, 2021, Georgia prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into Trump's alleged efforts to subvert the election in Georgia.
According to reports from Newsweek and the Washington Post, in December 2020, the Pentagon was on red alert, and ranking officers had discussed what they would do if President Trump decided to declare martial law. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and CIA director Gina Haspel became concerned about the threat of a possible coup attempt or military action against China or Iran. Milley, Haspel and NSA director Paul Nakasone agreed to monitor developments closely.
On January 6, 2021, while congressional certification of the presidential election results was taking place in the United States Capitol, Trump held a rally nearby at the Ellipse, where he called for the election result to be overturned and urged his supporters to "take back our country" by marching to the Capitol to "show strength" and "fight like hell". He spoke at noon that day and by 12:30 p.m., rally attendees had gathered outside the Capitol. At 1 p.m, members of the group of assembled persons pushed past police barriers onto Capitol grounds. Trump's speech ended at 1:10 p.m. Many more supporters marched to the Capitol, joining the crowd there. Around 2:15 p.m. the mob broke into the Capitol building, interrupting certification and causing the evacuation of Congress. The group had erected a mock gallows on the grounds said to be intended for Vice-President Pence because of his cooperation with the certification process. During the riot, President Trump posted messages on Twitter and Facebook. At 6 p.m, he urged those present "go home with love & in peace", calling them "great patriots" and "very special". Congress reconvened later in the day and confirmed the Biden election win in the early hours of the following morning. In the rioting five people died, including a Capitol Police officer.
On January 11, 2021, an article of impeachment charging Trump with incitement of insurrection against the U.S. government was introduced to the House. The House voted 232-197 to impeach Trump on January 13, making him the first U.S. President and the first officeholder to be impeached twice. The impeachment was the most rapid in history, and was followed an unsuccessful bipartisan effort to strip Trump of his powers and duties via Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. Ten Republicans voted for impeachment-the most members of a party ever to vote to impeach a president of their own party.
Biden was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2021. President Trump did not attend President Biden's inauguration. He left Washington for Florida hours before
On February 13, following a five-day Senate trial, Trump was acquitted when the Senate voted 57-43 for conviction, falling ten votes short of the two-thirds majority required to convict. Seven Republicans joined all Democrat senators in voting to convict. Most Republicans voted to acquit Trump, with some holding him responsible for the rioting, but felt the Senate did not have jurisdiction over former presidents. Republican senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said Trump was "practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day" but "constitutionally not eligible for conviction".
After his term ended, Trump went to live at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida where, in accordance with the Former Presidents Act, he set up an office to handle his post-presidential activities. Since leaving the presidency, Trump has been the subject of several probes into both his business dealings and his actions during the presidency. The New York State Attorney General's Office is conducting civil and criminal investigations into Trump's business activities, in conjunction with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. By May 2021, a special grand jury was considering indictments and on July 1, 2021, New York prosecutors charged the Trump Organization with a "15 year 'scheme to defraud' the government". The organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, was arraigned on grand larceny, tax fraud, and other charges.
On June 6, 2021, Trump resumed his campaign-style rallies with an 85-minute speech at the annual North Carolina Republican Party convention. On June 26, he held his first public rally since the January 6 rally that preceded the riot at the Capitol. Trump has held rallies in key states, including an October 2021 gathering in Iowa, where he told voters "We're going to take America back." He was critical of the Republicans who voted in factor of the Biden administration's Infrastructure Bill, calling them RINOs (Republicans In Name Only.) In a statement issued after passage of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, he said: "Very sad that the RINOs in the House and Senate gave Biden and Democrats a victory on the 'Non-Infrastructure' Bill. All Republicans who voted for Democrat longevity should be ashamed of themselves."
Trump continued fundraising, raising more than twice as much as the Republican Party itself. Much of his rhetoric has been about the people in charge of elections and how elections are run. In the 2022 midterm elections he endorsed over 200 candidates for various offices, most of whom supported his claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. He registered a new company in February 2021, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), to provide "social networking services" to "customers in the United States". In October 2021, Trump announced the planned merger of TMTG with Digital World Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). A main backer of the SPAC is China-based financier ARC Group, who was reportedly involved in setting up the proposed merger. The transaction is under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In February 2022, TMTG launched Truth Social, a Twitter-like social media platform.
In February 2021, the district attorney for Fulton County, Georgia, announced a criminal probe into President Trump's phone calls to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. The New York State Attorney General's Office is conducting criminal investigations into Trump's business activities in conjunction with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. In May 2021, a special grand jury was considering indictments, and in July 2021, New York prosecutors charged the Trump Organization with a "15 year 'scheme to defraud' the government". The organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, was arraigned on grand larceny, tax fraud, and other charges. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 criminal charges on August 18, 2022. As part of the plea agreement, he agreed to testify against The Trump Organization at trial and to pay approximately $2 million in back taxes, interest and penalties and waive any right to appeal.
In December 2021, the New York State Attorney General's office subpoenaed Trump to produce documents relating to his business. On April 25, 2022, New York state judge Arthur Engoron held Trump in contempt of court for failing to comply with the subpoena. He imposed a fine of $10,000 per day until compliance. Trump was deposed in August and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 400 times. In September 2022, the Attorney General of New York filed a civil fraud case against Trump, his three oldest children, and the Trump Organization.
When President Trump left the White House in January 2021, he took government documents and material with him to his Mar-a-Lago estate. By May 2021, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the federal agency that preserves government records asked his office to locate a number of documents and return them. In January 2022, they retrieved 15 boxes of White House records from Mar-a-Lago. NARA later informed the Department of Justice that some of the retrieved documents were classified material. The Justice Department began an investigation in April 2022 and convened a grand jury. The Justice Department sent President Trump a subpoena for additional material on May 11. On June 3, Justice Department officials visited Mar-a-Lago and received some classified documents from Trump's lawyers. One of the lawyers signed a statement affirming that all material marked as classified had been returned to the government. Later that month an additional subpoena was sent requesting surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, which was provided.
On August 8, 2022, FBI agents searched Trump's residence, office, and storage areas at Mar-a-Lago to recover government documents and material Trump had taken with him when he left office in violation of the Presidential Records Act, reportedly including some related to nuclear weapons. The search warrant, authorized by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and approved by a federal magistrate judge, and the written inventory of the seized items were made public on August 12. The text of the search warrant indicates an investigation of potential violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice laws. The items taken in the search included 11 sets of classified documents, four of them tagged as "top secret" and one as "top secret/SCI", the highest level of classification.
On November 18, 2022, Attorney-General Garland appointed a special counsel, federal prosecutor Jack Smith, to oversee the federal criminal investigations into President Trump retaining government property at Mar-a-Lago and examining Trump's role in the events leading up to the January 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
On November 15, 2022, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president in a speech to supporters at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. His announcement received wide media coverage and a mixed response from both Democrats and Republicans. Some Democrats see the former president as an easy opponent to defeat, while others are concerned about the negative effects his candidacy will have on American democracy. Some Republicans, mostly Trump loyalists, welcomed the announcement, while others opposed it, noting how poorly many of Trump's hand-picked candidates fared in the recent mid-term elections.
As of today, Donald Trump enjoys a significant lead in polling for the Republican Party's presidential nomination. According to RealClearPolitics and their aggregare polling data, Trump has a 47.5% lead over his closest opponent.