Enough

On November 3, 2020, President Donald J. Trump lost the US Presidential Election to Democratic candidate Joe Biden. Leading up to election day, Trump and his supporters, including some Republican legislators, anticipated this loss and began spreading narratives about voter fraud, using slogans like “stop the steal” to insinuate that election interference was occurring. While votes were being counted on November 3, Trump preemptively declared victory and tried to stop further vote counts. While the election was officially called for Biden on November 7, Trump refused to concede and filed dozens of lawsuits to try to overturn the election results. Multiple recounts took place after the election, each confirming the election results. In December 2020, Trump announced a rally in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021, to coincide with the official Congressional vote count, which would certify the election results.

Simultaneously, far-right Trump supporters began organizing immediately after the election to keep Trump in office or otherwise prevent a peaceful transition of power. The Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group, began discussing the possibility of a civil war among themselves and staged a violent pro-Trump protest in New York with the Proud Boys, a militant neo-fascist organization, in December 2020. The two groups planned to attend the January 6 rally and occupy federal buildings, including storming the Capitol. Social media posts regarding the rally increasingly called for violence, and images of the Capitol floorplan circulated online. The FBI and Capitol police monitored this activity and both issued warnings that armed violence was likely at the rally.

The rally began early on January 6 with speeches that called the election results into question and targeted Republican lawmakers who did not align with Trump. Around noon, Trump gave a speech stating he would never concede and encouraged Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election results—as noted in Enough, this was beyond Pence’s power, and Trump supported calls to hang Pence after he refused to challenge Biden’s victory. During his speech, he urged the crowd to march to the Capitol, where the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers had already breached the building’s outer perimeter. They were joined by hundreds of protestors from the rally and eventually broke into the Capitol building; some legislators evacuated while others sheltered in place. Rioters filmed themselves vandalizing offices and accessing secure computers. Five people died during the attack, including four Trump supporters and one Capitol police officer. The federal government estimates that 10,000 protestors entered the Capitol grounds and 1,200 entered the building (Arkin, William M. "Exclusive: Classified Documents Reveal the Number of January 6 Protestors." Newsweek, 23 Dec. 2021).

As of November 2023, the repercussions of the attack are ongoing. Over 1,200 people have been charged for their involvement in the attack. Proud Boy and Oath Keeper organizers received long jail sentences for seditious conspiracy, though many people facing charges are unaffiliated with these organizations. Cassidy Hutchinson provided live testimony for the January 6 Committee hearings, which focused specifically on the Trump administration’s role in the January 6 attack. The committee concluded that Trump was responsible for inciting the riot and recommended charges of “inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, [and] obstruction of an act of Congress” (“Jan. 6 Committee Refers Former President Trump for Criminal Prosecution.” New York Times, 19 Dec. 2022). In June 2023, Trump was indicted for criminal charges regarding his handling of classified documents, events portrayed in Enough. A few months later, he was indicted for over a dozen criminal charges regarding his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his actions regarding January 6.