‘They get to applaud. We had to evacuate.’ Jake Auchincloss reflects on two very different Jan. 6s.
WASHINGTON — The certification of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential victory proceeded routinely Monday in the House chamber, a methodical announcement of each state’s electoral votes so unexciting that Representative Jake Auchincloss leaned back in his seat.
“Dignified and boring,” the Newton Democrat said after the 30-minute exercise before a joint session of Congress presided over by Vice President Kamala Harris. “Just like it should be.”
His last words hung in the air of one of the tunnels below the Capitol as he walked back to his office. On Monday, those tunnels were simply a way to avoid the cold and snow outside. Four years ago, when the certification of electoral votes was anything but dignified and boring, they were vital escape routes for lawmakers and their staffers after a violent mob of Donald Trump supporters attacked the Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.
Contrasts like that abounded Monday, as bracing as the frigid weather.
On Jan. 6, 2021, the Capitol grounds erupted with the sounds of screaming protestors, shattering glass, and violent clashes with overwhelmed police officers. On Monday, a snowstorm and a wide security perimeter meant the only sounds outside the Capitol were the rumble of snowplows and the scraping of shovels.
On Jan. 6, 2021, then-Vice President Mike Pence had to be rushed out of the building to a secure location after rioters threatened to hang him for not going beyond his constitutional role and halting the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. On Monday, Harris — who lost the presidential election to Trump in November — walked purposely but calmly through the Capitol to oversee the certification of her rival’s win.
And on Jan. 6, 2021, a majority of congressional Republicans objected to certifying the 2020 election results, further boosting Trump’s lies that widespread fraud had cost him reelection. On Monday, Republicans cheered and applauded as those results were read for each state Trump had won.
“They get to applaud,” Auchincloss said after Trump’s election had been certified. “We had to evacuate.”
Auchincloss was just three days into his first term in Congress four years ago and could barely navigate the Capitol grounds. But he had left the certification session as Republicans had begun filing objections to the electoral votes from some states, triggering a longer, more complicated process. He found his way back to his office and saw the attack unfold on TV.
“One of the things that I trained in pretty extensively as a Marine officer was crowd control tactics,” Auchincloss, who served in Afghanistan and Panama, said Monday from that same office. “I remember looking up and seeing the Capitol Hill police perimeter and saying, ‘That line is going to break.’ ”
The rioters broke through and Trump did nothing for three hours as the attack unfolded. Four people in the crowd died and five law enforcement officers who were at the scene died in the following days and months, including four by suicide. Auchincloss’s building was on lockdown, but he returned with other members of Congress that night to certify the election.
“There’s broken glass everywhere. There’s National Guardsmen everywhere,” he recalled. But Auchincloss was determined the election needed to be certified, which it was in the early morning hours of Jan. 7, 2021, after lawmakers voted down the Republican objections.
“It was less about outrage at that moment and more about, ‘We’re going to complete our constitutional responsibility,’ ” he said.
Auchincloss felt the same about attending Monday’s election certification, even though his party lost.
A self-described history nerd, Auchincloss had pictures of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and others on his bedroom wall as a kid.
“Most kids have, like, musicians or athletes. I had the Founding Fathers,” he said. “I’ve always loved American history.”\
His Capitol Hill office features images of Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette, a French military officer who fought in the American Revolution, as well as the famous image of Washington crossing the Delaware River during the war.
“I would argue that maybe the most important thing that George Washington ever did, and he did a lot of important things, was hand over his sword ... to the Continental Congress,” Auchincloss said, the commander of the Revolutionary Army resisting the urge to use that power to install himself as the leader of the new nation.
So, Auchincloss said, it was a priority to be at the joint session Monday to show how a democracy should function, even though all lawmakers were not required to attend. His flight to Washington Sunday night was canceled because of the weather, but Auchincloss found a midnight flight to Baltimore and then drove the hour to Washington, getting about two hours of sleep before waking up to do an early morning TV interview.
“For me, it’s important in particular to support Kamala Harris as she certifies her own defeat, a profound act of patriotism that is unimaginable, coming from Donald Trump,” Auchincloss said before the session.
There appeared to be just a handful of absences in a mostly packed House chamber for the certification, the only official business for Congress Monday and one required by law to be held on Jan. 6.
“Today was obviously a very important day,” Harris told reporters in the Capitol afterward. “And it It was about what should be the norm and what the American people should be able to take for granted ... that there will be a peaceful transfer of power.”
Following the riot four years ago, Congress changed the procedure for certifying electoral votes, with the aim of clarifying ambiguities that were exploited by the Trump legal team attempting to overturn the 2020 election. The most significant change was the role of the vice president, who has constitutional power to oversee the certification process and approve the result. After Trump allies intensely pressured Pence to toss out Biden’s victory, the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 updated the existing 19th-century law governing the process by explicitly stating the vice president has only a “ministerial role” to affirm the count. The new law also raised the degree of difficulty for lawmakers to object to electoral votes.
While Democratic lawmakers have objected to past Republican election victories during the certification process — including Trump’s in 2016 — none did so on Monday.
“There are no election deniers on our side of the aisle,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said last week.
Instead, Democrats watched Monday and clapped mildly for states that Harris won while Republicans were much more boisterous in their applause for the announcement of Trump’s victories. Auchincloss only applauded when Massachusetts’ electoral votes were read and than at the end when Harris announced her own vote total. She allowed herself a slight smile at that point, a break from her solemn approach to the election certification.
Auchincloss acknowledged that his late-night trek back to Washington and the routine nature of this year’s certification process made it difficult for him to completely focus. And that summed up the difference between four years ago and Monday.
“I wouldn’t say I fell asleep, but I was resting my eyes,” he said. ”The way the transfer of power should work.”
By: Jim Puzzanghera
Source: The Boston Globe