U.S. Capitol

Congress met at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, to count the Electoral College votes confirming Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. The attack interrupted that count. The January 6 committee documented the attack and the alternate-elector plan as parts of the effort to overturn the result and keep Donald Trump in office.

The committee found that Donald Trump oversaw a plan, involving campaign lawyers and participating Republican officials, to submit purported Trump electoral votes from seven states Biden had won. The aim was to have Vice President Mike Pence reject certified Biden votes in favor of those invalid slates. The committee identified Kenneth Chesebro, Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows among those involved and described assistance from RNC chair Ronna McDaniel and other officials, while noting that some participants did not understand the full plan.

After Donald Trump directed supporters at the Ellipse to march to the Capitol, arrivals joined a site where the attack had already begun. The committee documented efforts by Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and others to obstruct the transfer of power; it did not describe every rally attendee as having the same conduct or prior knowledge.

The attack interrupted the proceedings. Congress resumed the count, and certification concluded at 3:44 a.m. on January 7: Joe Biden received 306 electoral votes and Donald Trump 232. Neither chamber sustained objections to Arizona’s or Pennsylvania’s votes.

Alternate-elector certificates: Republican slates in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin submitted documents purporting to cast electoral votes for Donald Trump. The National Archives identifies these as unofficial certificates that were not accepted as evidence of official state action.

The January 6 committee reported that the proposed use of these certificates was part of an effort to replace or reject certified Biden electoral votes. Pennsylvania and New Mexico documents included conditional wording; their text differed from the other five states. The original certificates and correspondence are linked below.

Evidence scope: this introduction compares the National Archives’ official results and unofficial certificates with chapters 3 and 8 of the congressional report, checked September 21, 2026. It does not assign criminal liability to every participant or summarize the current outcome of every state prosecution.

Witnesses included members of Donald Trump’s own White House, including White House counsel Pat Cipollone, deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews and chief-of-staff aide Cassidy Hutchinson. Chapter 7 sets out their testimony about his response during the attack, with citations to the underlying interviews; their accounts and the committee’s conclusions are identified separately.

Related Reports

Sources and Records

AI generated report by Explorvia.com.