Today, I am remembering the Storming of the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021.

The Storming of the U.S. Capitol was an organized paramilitary attack that represented a coup de force (or coup de majesté)—essentially an insurrection from above—carried out by then President Trump, members of his administration, and his supporters in conjunction with armed far-right militias.

More than 1,500 individuals have been charged with crimes relating to the Storming of the Capitol as of December 2024. Over 1,000 of those charged have already been found guilty or pled guilty to criminal actions, including serious violent crimes. The U.S. Department of Justice provided an overview of prosecutions and convictions in January 2024, reporting at that time that “approximately 452 defendants have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees, including approximately 123 individuals who have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer.”

A number of the militia members who participated in the attack have been charged and convicted of was a seditious conspiracy or insurrection. The U.S. Department of Justice commented on the conviction of members of the Oath Keepers on seditious conspiracy. NPR News provides a running tracker of charges and convictions in the largest criminal prosecution in the history of the United States.

It is shocking how many American citizens have such warped misunderstandings of the Storming of the Capitol on 6 January. This is largely due to a massive ahistorical media and social media campaign orchestrated by ex-President Trump and his political supporters to rewrite contemporary history.

Anyone who has supported ex-President Trump’s political “rehabilitation” since 2021 or voted for him in 2024 is complicit in the complete distortion of the historical record of the Storming of the Capitol.

Prosecutors and historians will continue to document the brutal violence of the Storming of the Capitol for years to come. Historians are used to confronting historiographical debates, but there are new challenges in combating outright distortions of the historical record in the social media age.

The New York Times has published an analysis of ex-President Trump’s sustained campaign to rewrite the history of the Storming of the Capitol in an article on “‘A Day of Love’: How Trump Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6.” The New York Times comments that “The president-elect and his allies have spent four years reinventing the Capitol attack — spreading conspiracy theories and weaving a tale of martyrdom to their ultimate political gain.”

NPR reports today on “As Trump rewrites history, victims of the Jan. 6 riot say they feel ‘betrayed.'”

Jonathan Alter has published an opinion piece on “Who Owns Jan.6” in the New York Times.

Aquilino Gonell, a former Sergeant of the U.S. Capitol Police, published an opinion piece today reflecting on the “insurrectionists” who participated in the Storming of the Capitol in The Hill. Gonell remarks that “Donald Trump ran for a second term to avoid accountability for his crimes. Republicans in Congress are complicit in his contempt for the rule of law. They don’t just want to move on from Jan. 6 — they want to suppress the indelible mark this blatant attack has left on American history. They can’t face the fact that their lies incited a fatal insurrection, and their negligence is a betrayal to the more than 140 police officers who were injured or died in the aftermath of the attack.”

Here is my commentary on “Siege Warfare and the Storming of the Capitol” from four years ago.