Congress Finalizes Joe Biden's Victory Over President Trump *
Live Updates: Congress Finalizes Joe Biden's Victory Over President Trump – Despite Violent Siege and GOP Delaying Tactics
After a day defined by fear, violence and unprecedented chaos, Congress officially confirmed President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the wee hours of Thursday morning.
Republican attempts to contest the results of the election served only to delay the inevitable. Vice President Mike Pence officially pronounced Biden the President-elect and Kamal Harris the Vice President-elect. They will be sworn in and assume office at noon on Jan. 20.
President Trump, after weeks of making baseless claims about election fraud—and inciting the mob of supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, finally promised an orderly transition of power, in a statement released immediately after the results were certified.
The tally tipped the win to Biden and Harris at 3:31 a.m. ET. The counting finally ended at 3:40 a.m.
The final proclamation on what is supposed to be a routine Congressional procedure capped off the most intense day on Capitol Hill in living memory. Shortly after lawmakers gathered in a joint session to certify Biden’s victory Wednesday, Trump supporters who had packed the streets of Washington, D.C., turned violent, breaching police barricades and storming the Capitol building.
One woman was killed by U.S. Capitol police and lawmakers were forced to shelter in place for hours after marauding supporters of the president forced their way into halls of Congress—ransacking offices and carrying off souvenirs, all in plain view of social media, photographers and TV cameras.
For the next several hours, the building was locked down, as lawmakers and staff were evacuated to undisclosed locations. For too many on Capitol Hill, the consequences of the incendiary rhetoric stoked by the president transcended into reality.
President Trump, temporarily banned from firing off tweets after inciting the violent mob, released a statement immediately after the results were certified and pledged an orderly transition of power moving forward—thought he said he still disagreed with the outcome.
The violence did not deter a last-ditch effort by a handful of U.S. Senators and half of the GOP caucus in the House to contest the results of the elections in Arizona and Pennsylvania—two states that Biden won by narrow margins. But the number of naysayers in the Senate shrunk by half in the wake of the violence. —Alana Abramson
TIME is tracking all of these developments as they unfold. Updates below.
1:30 a.m.: 1 killed by police, 3 died in medical emergencies during U.S. Capitol siege
U.S. Capitol police shot and killed one protester as she tried to enter the building Wednesday and three other people died from “separate medical emergencies” during the siege on the halls of Congress, according to Washington D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department.
A mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters were able to break through police lines and smash their way into the U.S. Capitol Wednesday afternoon—raising questions about security for the nation’s lawmakers.
Members of Congress have vowed to investigate the security failures, focusing especially on the U.S. Capitol Police—the federal agency of 2,300 that is charged with protecting Congress.
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