On the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris warned American voters against Donald Trump, calling him a “fascist,” a “petty tyrant,” and a threat to democracy – in days she will have to certify his election victory.
Four years after rioters cheered for the hanging of then-Vice President Mike Pence and tried to block the certification of the election that Trump lost, Harris is set to fulfill her duty as president of the Senate by certifying her own election loss and declaring Trump the winner of the 2024 election.
Federal law states that Congress must hold a session on January 6 at 1 p.m. to open each state’s certificates of their electoral votes. The president of the Senate, meaning the vice president, opens the certificates and presides over the session as bipartisan members of both chambers read aloud the results. After an official vote is counted, the president of the Senate declares a winner.
It’s the job of every vice president, but it may not be an easy one. On Monday, Harris will join the ranks of Pence and Al Gore, who also had to certify the election results for their rivals.
The upcoming certification stands out — namely because the 60-year-old Democrat has to now certify the election for the man she spent much of her 107-day bid warning against the “danger” he posed to democracy, the country, and the world.
She warned that he was a threat to reproductive freedoms. She called him “unstable.” She predicted that as president he was“going to sit there unstable, unhinged, plotting his revenge, plotting his retribution, creating an enemies list.”
“America: this is not a candidate for president who is thinking about how to make your life better. This is someone who is unstable, obsessed with revenge, consumed with grievance and out for unchecked power,” Harris said in one of her final speeches during the campaign.
“Look, we know who Donald Trump is,” Harris said. “He is the person who stood at this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election — an election that he knew he lost.”
Harris will now have to certify Trump’s win despite her constant blasting him and painting him as a threat to democracy.
It comes just four years after a violent mob attacked the Capitol in an effort to block the election certification for Joe Biden. Trump served as the “central cause” of the riot, a House select committee investigating the riot found.
In the nearly four years that followed, 1,561 individuals have been criminally charged in connection to the attack. The president-elect has left open the possibility of pardoning some of them; he’s called them “unbelievable patriots” and promised to help them “the first day we get into office.”
The federal criminal case against Trump for his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election results has been dismissed.
Ahead of this year’s certification, the Department of Homeland Security said it will be providing additional security as it marked January 6’s events as a “National Special Security Event” for the first time in history.
“National Special Security Events are events of the highest national significance,” said Eric Ranaghan, the Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s Dignitary Protective Division. “The U.S. Secret Service, in collaboration with our federal, state, and local partners are committed to developing and implementing a comprehensive and integrated security plan to ensure the safety and security of this event and its participants.”
