Are we heading for another J6?

These are not just idle questions. They are the reality in 2025.

On January 6th, 2021, between 2,000 and 2,500 people forcibly entered the Capitol building. They caused damage, mayhem, and created the most dangerous situation inside that building since 1954, when four Puerto Rican terrorists opened fire in the House chamber, wounding five members of Congress. In 1971 and again in 1983, bombs detonated inside the Capitol placed by Weather Underground terrorists and a group protesting the U.S. military, but neither caused any injuries. On August 24, 1814, the British captured the Capitol and set fire to it, but that was a legitimate act of war. J6 was the only mass invasion and occupation of the Capitol building not by a foreign power in the history of this nation.

A Gadsen flag discarded in the trash inside the Capitol building, January 7, 2021.

I can tell you personally that security inside the Capitol is sufficient so as not to allow any of the former terror events. You can’t get near either chamber without going through maximum security prison-level scans, device confiscations, and layers of security. But J6 was not a failure of security. It was many things: a failure of intelligence, a failure of civil order, and a failure of one man’s plan to retain power through nefarious extra-legal means, but it was not a failure of security.

The Secret Service, which was mostly concerned with keeping its protectees safe, estimated attendance at the Stop the Steal rally at the White House Complex to be around 20,000. But classified reports seen by Newsweek put the actual number who who showed up to be in excess of 120,000. Of the number who marched from the White House to the Capitol, around 2,500 breached the Capitol. The Capitol Police would have been overwhelmed at the arrival of even 50,000 or 100,000 marchers. At the point where some tried to gain entry with violence, it was only a matter of time before the police cordon failed, or a massacre occurred if the cops opened fire.

Prior to the Capitol march, then-President Donald Trump spoke to Stop the Steal rallygoers, the number of whom may have been best known in advance by the rally’s organizers, who did not share them with security agencies. Trump told them “if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election.”

All he has to do, all this is, this is from the number one, or certainly one of the top, Constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it. We're supposed to protect our country, support our country, support our Constitution, and protect our constitution.

Trump told them “they” wanted to “get rid of” the Jefferson Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial. (Those are still there, I can attest that personally, even after “they” ran the government for four years.)

He told them that COVID (“the China virus”) was responsible for changes to election laws that caused “the most brazen and outrageous election theft” in American history. He told them that Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Purdue (who both lost their seats to Democrats in a 2021 runoff a day earlier, mostly due to Trump telling supporters to stay home) “never had a shot” because the voting equipment “should never have been allowed to be used.”

Today, Trump is running ads and billboards in Georgia encouraging Republicans to vote early, and last I checked, the equipment is exactly the same as 2020 and 2022. A Georgia judge struck down most of the election changes made by the Georgia Election Commission, mostly because the commission lacks legal authority to make them, a decision supported by both Gov. Brian Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr. Those changes would have required a manual hand recount before county election officials could certify results. The new ruling makes it crystal clear that county election officials must certify results without delay. That’s one good thing.

But there were, at the time, still many uncertainties floating around the 2020 election. I was one of a group of writers warning that the COVID-related changes to election procedures were injecting uncertainty into the results. More than half of U.S. states and the District of Columbia expanded eligibility for voting, increased voter access, and encouraged voting by mail, loosening standards and creating confusion among voters and poll workers. Of course, there was a pandemic, and people were rightly concerned about crowds gathering in close proximity at polling places. Some changes were ordered by judges, without legislative review or signature by a governor.

Trump used the COVID crisis to amplify the election uncertainty. Especially in Georgia, he did his best to spoil the results in a way that would have thrown the election into doubt. But the equipment was proven to have performed correctly, and the hand count results substantially matched electronic results, falling far short of any legal bar to prove fraud allegations. In Trump’s infamous phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, the secretary said “Well Mr. President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong.”

There’s more than one definition of “wrong” at play here. One is that “wrong” means not factual. Trump’s own data was not factual. But to him, that was not “wrong.”

Not “wrong,” in the sense of not factual, just not convenient to him winning. And Trump went all the way to January 6th, and to 2024, and even to the extent that anyone in his orbit is prohibited from disagreeing, saying that his data is right, and he won the 2020 election. He continues to say it at rallies (though lately I’ve heard he hasn’t been mentioning it as much).

Trump has little concern for what is true. Only for what is practical and helpful to his narrative. And in this way, he is in lockstep with many liberal, progressive thought patterns. When it comes to the border, Trump doesn’t care if Haitians are really eating pet cats or not, only that the narrative of that helps to energize his supporters. This isn’t a new strategy. Remember 1998 and the murder of Matthew Shepard? Though the narrative of a hate crime against a young gay man in Wyoming has been strongly and convincingly challenged for years, the story is deeply embedded in that national psyche to the point that it hardly matters if the hate crime angle is true or not.

The shooting of Gabby Giffords is still widely cited and referenced as a politically motivated crime, when it’s been well established that it was the isolated act of a nutcase with a gun. The 2017 shooting on a baseball field of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, a Capitol Police officer, an aide and a lobbyist by then 66-year-old James Hodgkinson, who was armed with a rifle and a list of Republicans to kill, is rarely mentioned outside of conservative talk radio and blogs. But it is never really tied to Democratic invective against Republicans and Trump.

The two confirmed assassination attempts on Trump (the latest is not counted because it was not an assassination attempt; the man was released and never charged) are not being attributed to “threat to democracy” talk by Democrats in the mainstream media, and this talk continues to be defended regardless of the possible outcomes.

Let me go back to 2021. Of the 2,000 to 2,500 people who entered the Capitol, which represented about two percent of the total at the rally, about half of them had some affiliation with the 59-odd groups the FBI and Secret Service were tracking as potential sources of violence. There have been more than 1,200 charged (and over 700 guilty pleas) with federal crimes, and of those more than 460 have been imprisoned for those crimes. Many of the leaders of the violent groups are now in prison. Trump is charged in connection with the riots, but his phalanx of lawyers, along with a friendly judge and an overreaching prosecutor, have delayed his trial until well after the election. If Trump is elected and takes office, not a whole lot can stop him from pardoning himself and dismissing the charges.

It is true that the greatest threat to perfect justice for January 6th lies in Trump’s election in 2024. Many would disagree on the actual degree of threat to democracy itself of a second Trump presidency, but I don’t think even the most ardent Trump supporter could mount a believable defense that Trump’s self-pardon would be justified without also pardoning the others who had been convicted. Though Trump has promised pardons, I don’t think Trump has any intention of doing that—he could have pardoned Michael Cohen in 2018 on tax charges, and didn’t. The only “justice” that interests Trump is the saving of his own skin. Of course, we may never know, if he loses the election.

To save his own skin, should Trump lose in two weeks plus a day, what kind of violence would he call upon his supporters to accomplish, and will they do it? Of the 120,000 who went to the Stop the Steal rally (“will be wild!”), only a small fraction committed crimes. But judges who have sentenced January 6th rioters fear more violence.

“It scares me to think about what will happen if anyone on either side is not happy with the results of the election,” Judge Jia Cobb, a nominee of President Joe Biden, said during a sentencing hearing last month for four Capitol rioters.

The AP reported:

A Colorado woman known to her social media followers as the “J6 praying grandma”avoided a prison sentence in August when a magistrate judge sentenced her for disorderly conduct and trespassing on Capitol grounds. Rebecca Lavrenz told the judge that God, not Trump, led her to Washington on Jan. 6.

“And she has all but promised to do it all over again,” said prosecutor Terence Parker.

Sure, those who have stood before a judge have the opportunity to be unrepentant. But most have expressed regret for their actions. In 2020, the Trump campaign filed dozens of lawsuits contending election fraud, but never coming close to proving it, and took advantage of a badly-written electoral college voter certification law. Even then, the secret plan hatched in hushed rooms in state legislatures, and concocted by now-disbarred attorney John Eastman, failed. The breach of the Capitol failed. It nearly “succeeded” in getting hundreds killed if they had actually entered the Senate chamber, where heavily armed security and Secret Service awaited them.

The violence was limited to one dead by gunfire, and a number of officers injured (several died but not of causes directly related to the riot). The numbers being what they were, should Trump lose, who would organize and direct violence? How would it unfold? It’s not very much like MAGA people to simply flash-mob a place and burn down a Wendy’s. Playtriots like to march through streets sporting their slung rifles and open-carried pistols. To conduct the kind of violence that happened on J6, they’d have to recreate the conditions that led to that violence.

I don’t see Trump making a direct plea for violence, as that would get him arrested again and this time imprisoned quickly. Perhaps other groups might try. Maybe even groups the feds aren’t tracking closely.

If they try, the government will be ready. I don’t see a lot of potential for large scale violence if Trump loses. I do see a lot of hot air and shrill claims of “stolen!” coming from the MAGA crowd, and then some time of confusion until adults enter the room (if they ever do). Will a President-elect Harris become a “law and order” prosecutor, warning potential rioters of the consequences of their actions? Will outgoing President Joe Biden activate the National Guard, nationwide or in contested states, to preemptively stop violence? That may happen. It would not surprise me if it did.

But what about Democrats committing violence? What if Trump wins? What if the results come in and Trump wins 281-257. It’s not irrational. It’s not even unlikely. If Trump takes Georgia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, that’s the ballgame, even if he loses Wisconsin and Michigan.

The Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz, have been saying that Trump is a threat to democracy. Will they sue in dozens of states to show that perhaps voter intimidation has occurred that could have prevented some from voting to change the outcome? Will they oppose certification of the results on December 11 (the state “safe harbor” certification deadline) or December 17 (when electors vote)? Will they mount a campaign for faithless electors to vote for Harris, like the star-studded campaign did for Hillary Clinton in 2016? Will they gather in large bused-in demonstrations on the Capitol grounds on January 6th, 2025 to encourage Democrat Representatives and Senators to sign on to protests to prevent certification of the election?

Will they engage in mass political violence—organized violence—to stop Trump’s inauguration? Will there be more assassination attempts? Will a large and violent throng, hundreds of thousands strong, converge upon the Capitol on January 20, 2025 to stop Trump’s taking the oath of office? Will the nation convulse in a frightening and horrible way if Trump wins?

Will Trump activate the National Guard or act like he did in June 2020, clearing the protesters from Lafayette Park, when violence breaks out if he wins? In 2017, there was violence in Washington, D.C., at Trump’s inauguration. I imagine in 2025, there will be orders of magnitude more violence if Trump wins. The crowds may not burn the Capitol, like the British did in 1814, but can the police protect every public building and site in Washington, D.C. from a million violent rioters? Would Trump turn the city into an armed camp to conduct his own inauguration? Would Harris do that?

I think the age when you could just go to an inauguration (with a simple request to your congressional representative) may be over. In 2021, after J6, the Capitol turned into an armed camp. In 2025, it’s likely that may be the starting point. Both January 6th and January 20th, 2025 are now designated National Special Security Events (NSSE), which puts the U.S. Secret Service in charge of overall security planning. The week of the inauguration has long been designated an NSSE, but this year it’s going to be on steroids.

In 2021, January 6th was not considered an NSSE, and in 2025 it is. Will that be enough? In 2021, the Secret Service expected 20,000 to show up for the Stop the Steal rally. When 120,000 showed up, nobody was prepared until it was too late, and then the president did not act to authoritatively end the breach. In 2024, if a million show up, will any security measures be enough? And if the government is prepared (never mind fifth columns and insurrectionists in their own ranks), will there be a bloodbath?

These are not just idle questions. They are the reality of an election where both sides have played the facts as apocalyptic in importance and played truth as only what is convenient for their own narrative. Trump may be terrible; but despite all the measures taken to stop him, he might win. And if he does, will those who oppose him declare democracy dead and then resort to their own brand of insurrection?

Will there be another J6, but this one many times worse? I hope not, but I would not rule it out. I wouldn’t rule it out at all.

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