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      Former N.Y.P.D. Officer Is Convicted of Taking Part in Capitol Riot

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      Sara Carpenter yelled at, pushed against and slapped the arms of police officers, all while wielding a tambourine, prosecutors said.A former New York City police officer was convicted this week of several crimes for her role in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, during which, prosecutors said, she pushed against and slapped the arms of police officers, all while yelling and wielding a tambourine.A federal jury in Washington, D.C., found the retired officer, Sara Carpenter, guilty Thursday on seven felony and misdemeanor charges that included civil disorder, obstruction of official proceeding and entering or remaining in a restricted building or ground, according to court records.Ms. Carpenter, 53, is among about 1,000 people to be charged in connection with the Jan. 6 riot, prosecutors said. She and other supporters of former President Donald J. Trump stormed the Capitol that day in a bid to disrupt the certification of President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. The first person to be convicted, Guy Wesley Reffitt, was found guilty last March of obstructing Congress’s certification of the election results and other crimes.Security footage captured Ms. Carpenter, left, wielding a tambourine inside the Capitol. Department of JusticeMs. Carpenter was charged after security cameras captured her confronting a phalanx of officers as they guarded a hallway leading to the U.S. Senate chambers, prosecutors said. Despite having been told to leave the premises, she stayed for a half-hour, prosecutors said.At one point, prosecutors said, she could be heard yelling at the officers, “I’m an animal,” with a common vulgarity added for emphasis.When she finally left the building, prosecutors said, she was recorded on video saying: “The breach was made. It needs to calm down now. Congress needs to come out. They need to certify Trump as president. This is our house.”A lawyer for Ms. Carpenter, Michelle Gelernt, declined to comment on Friday. The New York Police Department did not immediately respond to an inquiry about Ms. Carpenter’s service as an officer. Ms. Carpenter is to be sentenced on July 14.About a day after the attack on the Capitol, the F.B.I. received an anonymous tip that Ms. Carpenter had called a relative and told that person that she had made it inside the Capitol and had been hit with tear gas, according to a criminal complaint. She was interviewed by federal officers about a week and a half later, on Jan. 18, the complaint says.Ms. Carpenter told investigators that she had left her home in New York and driven to Washington “on or about” the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, the complaint says. An E-ZPass tag attached to her vehicle confirmed that she had made the trip between 12 a.m. and 4 a.m. on Jan. 6, the complaint says.Once she got to Washington, Ms. Carpenter told investigators, she monitored Mr. Trump’s tweets to find out where to meet for the rally he had scheduled for Jan. 6 and then joined a large crowd of his supporters as it descended on the Capitol.Ms. Carpenter said that “she observed police yelling for individuals to get out, then pushing and shoving the crowd,” according to the complaint. She also told investigators that she had been trampled and pepper-sprayed.Using video that Ms. Carpenter provided and security camera footage from the building, investigators were able to track her movements through the Capitol. She also voluntarily turned over the tambourine she said she had carried inside the Capitol, the complaint says.Another former New York City police officer, Thomas Webster, was convicted last May for his role in the riot on charges that included assault. In September, Mr. Webster, who swung a metal flagpole at a Washington officer during the riot, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. More

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      Biden Marks 2nd Anniversary of Jan. 6 By Awarding 14 Presidential Medals

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      President Biden marked the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack by awarding the Presidential Citizens Medal to 14 people.Fourteen people who fought the violent mob at the Capitol two years ago and stood against election denialism in 2020 were awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — President Biden on Friday honored 14 people who stood against election denialism in 2020 and fought the violent mob at the Capitol two years ago, telling them in a White House ceremony that history “will remember your names, remember your courage, remember your bravery.”Speaking from the East Room, he awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to nine police officers — three of whom died after protecting the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — and five local officials who were subjected to personal violence but resisted pressure to undermine the election in 2020.Together, Mr. Biden said, the individuals he honored represented the “extraordinary Americans” whose service to the country helped thwart the efforts of former President Donald J. Trump and his allies as they sought to keep Mr. Trump in power.“A violent mob of insurrectionists assaulted law enforcement, vandalized sacred halls, hunted down elected officials, all for the purpose of attempting to overthrow the will of the people and usurp the peaceful transfer of power,” Mr. Biden said. “All of it — all of it — was fueled by lies about the 2020 election. But on this day, two years ago, our democracy held because we the people, as the Constitution refers to us, we the people did not flinch.”A year ago, on the first anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, Mr. Biden rejected the idea that Americans are “too bogged down by division to succeed,” though he added a grim, cautionary note: “Believe me, I know how difficult democracy is.”On Friday, as the president marked the second anniversary, those divisions were on full display in Washington.Twenty Republican lawmakers, most of them eager participants in the election lies that gave rise to the Jan. 6 attack, have repeatedly failed this week to elect a speaker, bringing the proceedings of democracy to a halt in the House.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.Democracy, it seems, is as difficult as Mr. Biden predicted a year ago.Mr. Biden’s first speech about Jan. 6 was also more focused on Mr. Trump and his actions. Speaking from Statuary Hall in the Capitol in 2022, the president issued a scathing takedown of his predecessor and vowed to “stand in this breach” to ensure that no one places “a dagger at the throat of our democracy.”This time, Mr. Biden sought to draw attention not to Mr. Trump, but to the people who stood against the former president.He began by honoring nine police officers, all of whom fought against the surge of violence on Jan. 6 as lawmakers met to certify Mr. Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump.He praised Daniel Hodges, a Washington police officer who was injured during his first visit to the Capitol, for his bravery amid the chaos.“Sprayed with poison, pinned and crushed, eye almost gouged out — he didn’t break,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Hodges.Mr. Biden honored Michael Fanone, a Capitol Police officer who he said was “beaten, beaten, not pushed around, beaten” and yet “defended our democracy with absolute courage.” And Mr. Biden also paid tribute to Caroline Edwards, the first law enforcement officer injured by the rioters, saying she was knocked unconscious by rioters but “got back up to help hold the line.”Mr. Biden also awarded the medal to Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer who faced racial slurs and harassment on Jan. 6; Aquilino Gonell, a sergeant with the Capitol Police who was injured in the attack; and Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer who led a pro-Trump mob away from the entrance to the Senate chamber.Three officers Mr. Biden honored on Friday died after the Jan. 6 attacks: Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who died of a stroke a day after the attacks; Howard C. Liebengood, who died by suicide three days after the attack; and Jeffrey L. Smith, a Metropolitan Police officer who also died by suicide after helping to protect the Capitol.Speaking to the family members of the honorees, who accepted the medals on the men’s behalf, Mr. Biden offered condolences and a sense of understanding about the grief they are still struggling to deal with.“Boy is it hard,” he said. “I know how proud I am when my son Beau is honored on the anniversary of his death as a consequence of burn pits in Iraq. But it brings everything back like it happened that moment.“I want to thank you for having the courage to be here today,” he added.In addition to the police officers, Mr. Biden awarded the medals to five local officials, each of whom refused to do the bidding of those who insisted that the election had been rigged.Two of them — Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who is her daughter — received the awards for serving as poll workers in Atlanta, where they were subjected to abuse by Trump supporters who falsely accused them of participating in election fraud.“Both of them were just doing their jobs, and they were targeted and threatened by the same peddlers of a lie that was fueling the insurrection,” Mr. Biden said. “They were literally forced from their homes and faced despicable racist taunts.”Mr. Biden also praised Al Schmidt, who was a city commissioner on the Philadelphia County Board of Elections in 2020, noting that he “did not bend, he did not bow, he did not yield to the political threats and pressure.” And he hailed Jocelyn Benson, who served as the Secretary of State of Michigan during the 2020 election, and Rusty Bowers, the Republican House speaker in Arizona. All three resisted pressure from those seeking to overturn the results in 2020.Mr. Biden called Ms. Benson “a true leader in our nation” and said Mr. Bowers shows people “what integrity is all about.”A year ago, with the events of Jan. 6 looming in the more recent past, Mr. Biden expressed greater worry about the future of the country, saying that “as we stand here today — one year since Jan. 6, 2021 — the lies that drove the anger and madness we saw in this place, they have not abated.”But on Friday, he returned to the optimism that has often characterized his speeches.“We’re not a land of kings and dictators, autocrats and extremists,” he said. “As we see in today’s honorees, we’re a nation and we the people that toughen our fiber, renew our faith and strengthen our cause. There’s nothing beyond our capacity, if we act together.” More

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      2016 Campaign Looms Large as Justice Dept. Pursues Jan. 6 Inquiry

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      Top officials at the department and the F.B.I. appear intent on avoiding any errors that could taint the current investigation or provide ammunition for a backlash.As the Justice Department investigation into the attack on the Capitol grinds ever closer to former President Donald J. Trump, it has prompted persistent — and cautionary — reminders of the backlash caused by inquiries into Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland is intent on avoiding even the slightest errors, which could taint the current investigation, provide Mr. Trump’s defenders with reasons to claim the inquiry was driven by animus, or undo his effort to rehabilitate the department’s reputation after the political warfare of the Trump years.Mr. Garland never seriously considered focusing on Mr. Trump from the outset, as investigators had done earlier with Mr. Trump and with Mrs. Clinton during her email investigation, people close to him say.As a result, his investigators have taken a more methodical approach, carefully climbing up the chain of personnel behind the 2020 plan to name fake slates of Trump electors in battleground states that had been won by Joseph R. Biden Jr.That has now led them to Mr. Trump and his innermost circle: Justice Department lawyers are questioning witnesses directly about the actions of Mr. Trump and top advisers like his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.Christopher Wray, the F.B.I. director, appears to be proceeding with caution in hopes of armoring the bureau against future attacks by making sure his agents operate by the book. Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesAs prosecutors delve deeper into Mr. Trump’s orbit, the former president and his allies in Congress will almost certainly accuse the Justice Department and F.B.I. of a politically motivated witch hunt.The template for those attacks, as Mr. Garland and the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray, well know, was “Crossfire Hurricane,” the investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia, which Mr. Trump continues to dismiss as a partisan hoax.The mistakes and decisions from that period, in part, led to increased layers of oversight, including a major policy change at the Justice Department. If a decision were made to open a criminal investigation into Mr. Trump after he announced his intention to run in the 2024 election, as he suggests he might do, the department’s leaders would have to sign off on any inquiry under an internal rule established by Attorney General William P. Barr and endorsed by Mr. Garland.“Attorney General Garland and those investigating the high-level efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election are acutely aware of how any misstep, whether by the F.B.I. or prosecutors, will be amplified and used for political purposes,” said Mary B. McCord, a top Justice Department official during the Obama administration. “I expect there are added layers of review and scrutiny of every investigative step.”Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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      McConnell and McCarthy’s Jan. 6 Fury at Trump Faded by February

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      In the days after the attack, Representative Kevin McCarthy planned to tell Mr. Trump to resign. Senator Mitch McConnell told allies impeachment was warranted. But their fury faded fast.In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building, the two top Republicans in Congress, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell, told associates they believed President Trump was responsible for inciting the deadly riot and vowed to drive him from politics. Mr. McCarthy went so far as to say he would push Mr. Trump to resign immediately: “I’ve had it with this guy,” he told a group of Republican leaders.But within weeks both men backed off an all-out fight with Mr. Trump because they feared retribution from him and his political movement. Their drive to act faded fast as it became clear it would mean difficult votes that would put them at odds with most of their colleagues.“I didn’t get to be leader by voting with five people in the conference,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, told a friend.The confidential expressions of outrage from Mr. McCarthy and Mr. McConnell, which have not been previously reported, illustrate the immense gulf between what Republican leaders say privately about Mr. Trump and their public deference to a man whose hold on the party has gone virtually unchallenged for half a decade.The leaders’ swift retreat in January 2021 represented a capitulation at a moment of extraordinary political weakness for Mr. Trump — perhaps the last and best chance for mainstream Republicans to reclaim control of their party from a leader who had stoked an insurrection against American democracy itself.This account of the private discussions among Republican leaders in the days after the Jan. 6 attack is adapted from a new book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” which draws on hundreds of interviews with lawmakers and officials, and contemporaneous records of pivotal moments in the 2020 presidential campaign.Mr. McConnell’s office declined to comment. Mark Bednar, a spokesman for Mr. McCarthy, denied that the Republican leader told colleagues he would push Mr. Trump to leave office. “McCarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign,” Mr. Bednar said.Representative Kevin McCarthy in the Capitol two weeks after the riot.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesNo one embodies the stark accommodation to Mr. Trump more than Mr. McCarthy, a 57-year-old Californian who has long had his sights set on becoming speaker of the House. In public after Jan. 6, Mr. McCarthy issued a careful rebuke of Mr. Trump, saying that he “bears responsibility” for the mob that tried to stop Congress from officially certifying the president’s loss. But he declined to condemn him in sterner language.In private, Mr. McCarthy went much further.On a phone call with several other top House Republicans on Jan. 8, Mr. McCarthy said Mr. Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 had been “atrocious and totally wrong.” He faulted the president for “inciting people” to attack the Capitol, saying that Mr. Trump’s remarks at a rally on the National Mall that day were “not right by any shape or any form.”During that conversation, Mr. McCarthy inquired about the mechanism for invoking the 25th Amendment — the process whereby the vice president and members of the cabinet can remove a president from office — before concluding that was not a viable option. Mr. McCarthy, who was among those who objected to the election results, was uncertain and indecisive, fretting that the Democratic drive to impeach Mr. Trump would “put more fuel on the fire” of the country’s divisions.But Mr. McCarthy’s resolve seemed to harden as the gravity of the attack — and the potential political fallout for his party — sank in. Two members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet had quit their posts after the attack and several moderate Republican governors had called for the president’s resignation. Video clips of the riot kept surfacing online, making the raw brutality of the attack ever more vivid in the public mind.The mob breaking into the Capitol.Win McNamee/Getty ImagesOn Jan. 10, Mr. McCarthy spoke again with the leadership team and this time he had a plan in mind.The Democrats were driving hard at an impeachment resolution, Mr. McCarthy said, and they would have the votes to pass it. Now he planned to call Mr. Trump and tell him it was time for him to go.“What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it,” he told the group.Mr. McCarthy said he would tell Mr. Trump of the impeachment resolution: “I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign.”He acknowledged it was unlikely Mr. Trump would follow that suggestion.Mr. McCarthy spent the four years of Mr. Trump’s presidency as one of the White House’s most obedient supporters in Congress. Since Mr. Trump’s defeat, Mr. McCarthy has appeased far-right members of the House, some of whom are close to the former president. Mr. McCarthy may need their support to become speaker, a vote that could come as soon as next year if the G.O.P. claims the House in November.Representative Kevin McCarthy with Mr. Trump in Bakersfield, Calif., in 2020.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut in a brief window after the storming of the Capitol, Mr. McCarthy contemplated a total break with Mr. Trump and his most extreme supporters.During the same Jan. 10 conversation when he said he would call on Mr. Trump to resign, Mr. McCarthy told other G.O.P. leaders he wished the big tech companies would strip some Republican lawmakers of their social media accounts, as Twitter and Facebook had done with Mr. Trump. Members such as Lauren Boebert of Colorado had done so much to stoke paranoia about the 2020 election and made offensive comments online about the Capitol attack.“We can’t put up with that,” Mr. McCarthy said, adding, “Can’t they take their Twitter accounts away, too?”Mr. McCarthy “never said that particular members should be removed from Twitter,” Mr. Bednar said.Other Republican leaders in the House agreed with Mr. McCarthy that the president’s behavior deserved swift punishment. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the second-ranking House Republican, said on one call that it was time for the G.O.P. to contemplate a “post-Trump Republican House,” while Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the head of the party’s House campaign committee, suggested censuring Mr. Trump.Yet none of the men followed through on their tough talk in those private conversations.In the following days, Mr. McCarthy heard from some Republican lawmakers who advised against confronting Mr. Trump. In one group conversation, Representative Bill Johnson of Ohio cautioned that conservative voters back home “go ballistic” in response to criticism of Mr. Trump, demanding that Republicans instead train their denunciations on Democrats, such as Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden.“I’m just telling you that that’s the kind of thing that we’re dealing with, with our base,” Mr. Johnson said.When only 10 House Republicans joined with Democrats to support impeaching Mr. Trump on Jan. 13, the message to Mr. McCarthy was clear.By the end of the month, he was pursuing a rapprochement with Mr. Trump, visiting him at Mar-a-Lago and posing for a photograph. (“I didn’t know they were going to take a picture,” Mr. McCarthy said, somewhat apologetically, to one frustrated lawmaker.)Mr. McCarthy has never repeated his denunciations of Mr. Trump, instead offering a tortured claim that the real responsibility for Jan. 6 lies with security officials and Democratic legislative leaders for inadequately defending the Capitol complex.Senator Mitch McConnell, left, with Senator Patrick Leahy after it was announced that Mr. Leahy would preside over Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesIn the Senate, Mr. McConnell’s reversal was no less revealing. Late on the night of Jan. 6, Mr. McConnell predicted to associates that his party would soon break sharply with Mr. Trump and his acolytes; the Republican leader even asked a reporter in the Capitol for information about whether the cabinet might really pursue the 25th Amendment.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Signs of progress. More

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      Jan. 6 Suspect Blames Trump for Spurring Him to Capitol Riot

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      Dustin Thompson, an unemployed exterminator from Ohio, was the first defendant tried in the Capitol attack to offer a Trump-made-me-do-it defense before a jury.WASHINGTON — Dustin Thompson’s trip down what he called “the rabbit hole” of election misinformation began eight months before a single vote was cast in 2020. It ended inside the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where he was part of the mob of Trump supporters that stormed inside during Congress’s counting of electoral votes in the worst attack on the building since the War of 1812.An exterminator from Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Thompson, 38, was laid off in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic. Alone at home with his new wife, he began spending long days on the internet, steeping himself in conspiracy theories about the upcoming vote.As the election approached, he said, he fully believed that if Donald J. Trump ended up losing, it would only be because the voting had been rigged, as the president had been warning publicly for months. Even after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner, Mr. Thompson could not accept that it was true.All of this, he told a jury at his criminal trial on Wednesday, led him to Washington on Jan. 6 for a Stop the Steal rally, where he and a friend listened to Mr. Trump give an incendiary speech near the White House.In an hour on the witness stand, Mr. Thompson blamed Mr. Trump for what eventually occurred, saying that he had been answering the president’s call to go to the Capitol and “fight like hell” when he joined the throng swarming into the building and made off with a bottle of bourbon and a coat rack.“If the president’s giving you almost an order to do something,” he said, “I felt obligated to do that.”Mr. Thompson’s story is not unusual. At several points during the Justice Department’s vast investigation of the Capitol attack, many people charged with crimes have sought to blame Mr. Trump in various ways for their actions, mostly at pretrial bail hearings or at sentencings after pleading guilty.But Mr. Thompson is the first defendant to attempt the argument at trial in front of a jury. In making his case, he offered a window into the toxic and relentless flood of conspiracy theories and lies, stoked by Mr. Trump, that helped give rise to the riot.The move comes with considerable risk, and its success or failure could determine not only Mr. Thompson’s fate, but that of other defendants accused of taking part in the violence of Jan. 6.Before the trial began, Mr. Thompson admitted to prosecutors that he had gone into the Capitol and stolen government property, agreeing in advance to nearly every element of the six charges he faces. His defense will rest almost entirely on the question of his state of mind during the riot.Mr. Thompson has claimed that he did not knowingly or corruptly break the law, but rather, as his lawyer said on Tuesday, was “so influenced — so used and abused” by Mr. Trump that he could not be held accountable for his behavior.The Trump-made-me-do-it defense has not fared well with judges. While it could work better on a jury, Mr. Thompson seemed to stumble on Wednesday during cross-examination, undercutting key elements of his argument.William Dreher, a prosecutor, got him to admit several times that Mr. Trump had not been at his side, offering him step-by-step instructions, when he walked into the Senate parliamentarian’s office and walked out with the whiskey and the coat rack. Mr. Thompson acknowledged that he was a married adult with a college degree who could make his own decisions.Mr. Thompson also conceded under questioning by Mr. Dreher that he had known it was unlawful to go into the Capitol on Jan. 6 while lawmakers were finalizing the results of the election. That appeared to contradict a central pillar of his own defense.While Mr. Thompson’s claims that he was under Mr. Trump’s spell do not carry any legal weight as evidence, they echo similar allegations the government has made in other cases connected to Jan. 6. In those cases, prosecutors have gone to great lengths to describe how rioters at the Capitol were motivated by Mr. Trump’s statements, including his speech at the Ellipse and a tweet he posted on Dec. 19, 2020 calling on his followers to attend a “wild” protest in Washington on Jan. 6.Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: New DevelopmentsCard 1 of 5Debating a criminal referral. More

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      4 Takeaways From the Jan. 6 Capitol Attack Commemoration

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      WASHINGTON — This anniversary of Jan. 6 marked a turning point for President Biden, who for much of his first year in office avoided direct confrontation with his predecessor, Donald J. Trump.On Thursday, Mr. Biden took deliberate aim at Mr. Trump, assailing him for watching television as the attacks unfolded, spreading a lie that the 2020 election was rigged, and holding “a dagger at the throat of America” when he encouraged his supporters to attack the United States Capitol.But Mr. Biden held on to one vestige from the past year: He still refused to call Mr. Trump by name.Here are four takeaways from the day.Biden takes a new, confrontational approach to Trump.As president-elect in November 2020, Mr. Biden and his staff proceeded with the transition process by treating Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election as little more than histrionics.The calculation made back then by Mr. Biden and his advisers was that America was simply ready to move on, but on Thursday, the president was more willing than usual to address Mr. Trump’s claims, calling him a loser in the process.“He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president — defeated by a margin of over 7 million of your votes in a full and free and fair election,” Mr. Biden said. “There is simply zero proof the election results were inaccurate.”His remarks set him down a more confrontational path with Mr. Trump, who holds a firm grip on his party and shows no sign of backing down from continuing to perpetrate a false narrative about the 2020 election. It is a development Mr. Biden spent his first year in office avoiding, but one that he seemed to embrace as a matter of necessity on Thursday.Understand the Jan. 6 InvestigationBoth the Justice Department and a House select committee are investigating the events of the Capitol riot. Here’s where they stand:Inside the House Inquiry: From a nondescript office building, the panel has been quietly ramping up its sprawling and elaborate investigation.Criminal Referrals, Explained: Can the House inquiry end in criminal charges? These are some of the issues confronting the committee.Garland’s Remarks: Facing pressure from Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed that the D.O.J. would pursue its inquiry into the riot “at any level.”A Big Question Remains: Will the Justice Department move beyond charging the rioters themselves?Biden rejects working with Republicans who support ‘the rule of a single man.’On his Inauguration Day just under a year ago, Mr. Biden promised to be “a president for all Americans. I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as for those who did.” On Thursday, he appeared not as the peacemaker president but as a leader who had a warning for Americans who attacked the Capitol in service of Mr. Trump.“I did not seek this fight brought to this Capitol one year ago today, but I will not shrink from it either,” Mr. Biden said. “I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation. And I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of our democracy.”Mr. Biden also reserved some of his ire for elected officials. For a leader who came into office speaking poetically about the art of bipartisanship — “politics is the art of the possible,” he said early on — and about the need to heal a fractured nation, Mr. Biden suggested that he was only interested in working with Republicans who have not tied their political fortunes to the falsehoods spread by Mr. Trump.“While some courageous men and women in the Republican Party are standing against it, trying to uphold the principles of that party, too many others are transforming that party into something else,” Mr. Biden said. “But whatever my other disagreements are with Republicans who support the rule of law and not the rule of a single man, I will always seek to work together with them to find shared solutions where possible.”Trump — and Trumpism — is not going away.Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, center left, and Representative Matt Gaetz, center right, during a news conference in Washington on Thursday.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe president’s remarks presented a stark choice: “Are we going to be a nation that lives not by the light of the truth but in the shadow of lies?” In corners of the internet governed by Mr. Trump and his supporters, the answer seemed clear.On a podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump aide who was indicted in November for failing to comply with congressional investigators, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia deflected blame for the attack and suggested it was part of a government conspiracy.In his own cascade of statements, Mr. Trump showed no sign that he was going to shrink from a fight. He assailed Mr. Biden for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and even the way he delivered his Thursday remarks.Key Figures in the Jan. 6 InquiryCard 1 of 10The House investigation. More

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      President Biden Praises Bob Dole in Ceremony at the Capitol

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      WASHINGTON — Beneath the dome of the Capitol he loved, Bob Dole was celebrated on Thursday for wit and grace, principle and persistence, but above all for civility and bipartisanship, in a subtle rebuke to a Republican Party that has changed much since Mr. Dole was its standard-bearer.Addressing dignitaries of both parties gathered to honor the son of the Kansas Dust Bowl and a former Senate majority leader, President Biden used Mr. Dole’s own words as a pointed message to adversaries whom he sees as drifting from the moorings of democracy itself.“I cannot pretend that I have not been a loyal champion of my party, but I always served my country best when I did so first and foremost as an American,” Mr. Biden said, quoting what he said were Mr. Dole’s final words to the nation. “When we prioritize principles over party and humanity over personal legacy — when we do that, we accomplish far more as a nation. By leading with shared faith in each other, we become America at its best.”Mr. Dole, who died on Sunday at 98, became only the 30th known man to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda, its entryways draped in black bunting, his coffin set upon the catafalque built in 1865 to hold the coffin of Abraham Lincoln. One woman, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has lain in state in the Capitol, but her coffin was placed in National Statuary Hall, adjacent to the Rotunda.President Biden speaks in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington on Thursday.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesSpeaker Nancy Pelosi rests her hand on the casket of former Senator Bob Dole.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesIn a short ceremony, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was the only Republican to eulogize Mr. Dole, whom he eclipsed in 2018 as the longest-serving Senate Republican leader. Mr. McConnell honored the man who had been grievously wounded in the Italian campaign during World War II as the last of the “greatest generation” to run for president, in 1996.“Bob was blessed with long life to watch his legacy take effect,” Mr. McConnell said.The Democrats who spoke — Mr. Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the current majority leader — all extolled virtues in Mr. Dole that they implied were lacking in his successors.Mr. Schumer called him “a principled, pragmatic Kansan” who “never hesitated to work with Democrats.” Ms. Pelosi also spoke of principle, as well as patriotism.But it was the president who used the moment to appeal to the gathering — and the country at large — to rediscover what Americans hold in common.“The truth of the matter is, as divided as we are, the only way forward for democracy is unity, consensus — the only way,” Mr. Biden said. “May we follow his wisdom and his timeless truth and reach consensus on the basic fundamental principles we all agree on.”Thursday morning at the Capitol seemed to recall a less bitter time, in honor of a man who himself spoke to a more perfect union. Not long after Mr. Dole began his presidential campaign, his opponent, Bill Clinton, was impeached amid extraordinary ill will. As Mr. Dole was leaving the Senate in 1996 to assume the mantle of his party’s nominee, he famously took a call from Mr. Clinton, spoke warmly to him and concluded, “I want to just thank you for all the times we’ve been able to work together.”In a short ceremony, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky was the only Republican to eulogize Mr. Dole.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesRepresentative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader, right, hugs a guest at the ceremony. Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Just months after Mr. Clinton defeated Mr. Dole, the president awarded his vanquished opponent the Presidential Medal of Freedom.“Upon receiving this medal, Senator Dole challenged us, in his words, ‘not to question American ideals or replace them, but to act worthy of them,’” Ms. Pelosi said.Mr. McConnell recalled a particularly acerbic quote that Mr. Dole had for the conservative “revolutionaries” who helped the Republicans win majorities in both houses of Congress in 1994; the new majority leader said that if he had known Republicans would win the majority, he would have recruited better candidates. The anecdote may have been a dig by Mr. McConnell at his own right flank, which has been working against his efforts to keep the government from defaulting on its debt in the coming weeks.Before the ceremony, the building was buzzing with friendly joshing. Lloyd J. Austin III, the secretary of defense, chatted with Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the majority leader. Pat Roberts, a former Republican senator, joined a reunion of fellow Kansans in bidding goodbye to the man from Russell, Kan.Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, arrive at the ceremony on Thursday.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times Mr. Dole’s wife, Elizabeth Dole — who later became a senator and ran for president herself — is escorted to the ceremony.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesAnd in the spirit of bipartisanship that was being celebrated — or mourned — two former Senate majority leaders, Tom Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota, and Trent Lott, a Republican from Mississippi, met in Mr. McConnell’s office and walked together to the Capitol’s rotunda.The ceremony, in all its solemnity, was known well to Mr. Dole. In one of his last public appearances, he rose from his wheelchair in 2018 to pay his respects to former President George H.W. Bush as he lay in state under the dome, in the geographic center of the nation’s capital. Nine years ago this month, another senator, Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, also lay in state and received a send-off from Mr. Dole, a lifelong friend with whom Mr. Inouye had convalesced in a Battle Creek, Mich., military hospital recovering from life-changing war wounds.As Mr. McConnell noted, Mr. Dole had lived long enough to see politics — and his party — change. Just weeks before Mr. Inouye’s death in 2012, Mr. Dole sat slightly slumped in his wheelchair on the Senate floor and accepted the well-wishes of senators he was imploring to vote for a United Nations treaty that would ban discrimination against people with disabilities. He reasoned with them that the United States was already in compliance, and that he merely wanted the rest of the world to recognize the advances that he and other Americans with disabilities already enjoyed.Then, after Mr. Dole’s wife, Elizabeth, rolled him off the floor, Republicans voted down the treaty that the ailing Mr. Dole so longed to see passed — but that they insisted would infringe on American sovereignty.A military honor guard carries the coffin of former Senator Bob Dole into the U.S. Capitol, in Washington on Thursday.Tom Brenner for The New York Times More