WASHINGTON — One year after rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Florida Democrats are reflecting on the fragility of democracy and the unfinished fight for accountability. Their Republican colleagues kept their focus on gaps in Capitol security for the somber anniversary rather than the motivations behind the unprecedented attack.
Rep. Ted Deutch, a South Florida Democrat, said he was on his way to lunch when he received the emergency alert from Capitol Police that rioters had breached the Capitol. He ran to his office where he and staff hid in the dark and watched the chaos unfold on a muted iPad.
“Every time there was a noise outside the office I wondered if they were looking for members. And frankly as a Jewish member of Congress one of the most pathetic thoughts of that day, knowing there was this white supremacist element, I was grateful for being in a new office, having not yet put up a mezuzah,” Deutch told the Miami Herald.
“We’re now one year out, and what we need to remember is how close we came that day to take an enormous step back in the history of this country,” Deutch said.
A year after the attack, Deutch and other congressional Democrats say the work to safeguard democracy remains largely unfinished as President Joe Biden and lawmakers prepare to commemorate the anniversary of the attack Thursday.
A House select committee continues to probe into the attack, but it remains to be seen whether the inquiry will result in any legal consequences for former President Donald Trump or his closest allies.
Trump remains a highly sought-after endorsement by Republican candidates in races around the country following his acquittal for incitement of insurrection after his second impeachment trial, and he continues to promote conspiracy theories about the 2020 election without evidence.
And national voting rights legislation has stalled in the Senate as GOP-controlled legislatures around the country have enacted new voting restrictions in the wake of the 2020 election.
“We’ve taken for granted democracy in this country, the right to vote, the right to elect the people who want to be your elected officials,” said Rep. Lois Frankel, a former West Palm Beach mayor in her fifth term in Congress who now counts Trump among her constituents.
“People need to know that it’s fragile. It’s resilient but it’s also fragile and we need to really step it up to make sure that not only that what happened on Jan. 6 never happens again,” said Frankel, who sheltered in a Capitol conference room with colleagues during the attack.
Frankel said that people should not lose sight of the fact that democracy won and that Congress certified Biden’s election in the early hours of Jan. 7 after the Capitol had been cleared.
But 147 Republicans voted to block electors from either Arizona and Pennsylvania in the immediate aftermath of the riot.
“There’s an unremovable stain on their reputations,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a former Democratic National Committee chair who represents parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties.
Sen. Rick Scott, a former Florida governor and chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he stood by his vote to block Pennsylvania’s 20 electors.
“Absolutely,” Scott said. “Because I believe it.”
He did not elaborate further on his rationale for his objection to the state’s electors, but he drew a sharp distinction between lawmakers’ objections to state’s electors and the violence that preceded it.
“I think it’s disgusting that people broke into the Capitol. I think that never should have happened. They need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Democracy prevailed. Whether I like the result of the election or not, democracy prevailed. We did our job,” Scott said.
Trump abandoned plans for an event at Mar-a-Lago on the anniversary of the Capitol attack, but he will likely make many of the same claims when he holds a Jan. 15 rally in Arizona, the swing state whose electoral votes lawmakers were debating at the moment rioters breached the Capitol.
Scott said he was unaware of Trump’s plans when asked about the former president’s cancellation of his Jan. 6 event.
David Becker, the founder and executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the ongoing misinformation campaign by the former president has helped fuel threats against election officials across the country and increases risk of future political violence.
“The rule of law is not the final word for some people, for the election deniers. And that’s when violence becomes the next natural stage. So I’m very concerned about 2022,” said Becker, who served as a senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s voting division during the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters Wednesday during a roundtable that rhetoric from political leaders had contributed to the threat of domestic extremism.
“I think it’s very important to state that words matter. False narratives about a stolen election have an impact on the threat landscape. The words of leaders matter a lot. So I think we’re seeing a greater connectivity,” Mayorkas said.
Wasserman Schultz called the one-year anniversary of the attack “a day that we have to continue to demand accountability for those who tried to subvert our democracy either violently or by other means.”
She and Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who served as lead prosecutor at Trump’s second impeachment trial, are collaborating on a plan to use the 14th Amendment, which prohibits people who went to war against the union or aided the nation’s enemies from running for state and federal office, to prevent insurrectionists from getting elected.
Wasserman Schultz said the definitions are broad and would apply to anyone who sought to overthrow a legitimately elected government, including the “masterminds and maestros,” an interpretation that would potentially apply to Trump and current members of Congress as the select committee uncovers new details of the events that led up to the attack.
“There have to be really serious consequences both for the people who tried to storm the Capitol and tried to carry out the bidding,” she said.
Rep. Carlos Giménez, a Republican congressman and former Miami-Dade County mayor, panned the select committee’s focus on former Trump officials in a statement when asked if Congress had done enough to prevent another attack or ensure accountability.
He said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “has focused the commission’s attention away from addressing the collapse of the chain of command at the Capitol, the deficiencies in resources Capitol Police had at their disposition to deter and prevent an attack on the Capitol, and instead has focused on going after members of the Trump administration. As a result, we are no safer today than we were a year ago.”
Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Miami similarly focused his comments on House leaders when asked on the issue.
“Despite their rhetoric, House Democratic leadership has done the bare minimum to secure the Capitol and ensure our Capitol Police officers have the necessary resources to do their job,” Diaz-Balart said in a statement.
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(McClatchy’s Michael Wilner contributed to this report.)
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