Jan 6 riot news live: Biden says Trump ‘rallied mob to attack’

While Fox News carried Joe Biden’s speech at the US Capitol, other outlets on the right of the media spectrum either ignored it altogether or radically miscast its content (intentionally or otherwise).

Nancy Pelosi is addressing a session of the House of Representatives convened to commemorate the insurrection. You can watch the proceedings live here.

Michael Fanone, the Washington police officer badly beaten and tased by rioters on the Capitol’s west front, has praised colleagues in his former department and the US Capitol Police who have to share the building with members who helped inspire and have defended or minimised the insurrection.

As he put it, they have to “walk the same halls as some of these insurrectionist members of Congress” – and “I couldn’t imagine sharing a workspace with those jacka**es”.

Supporters of Joe Biden and opponents of Donald Trump are heaping praise on the president’s “blistering” speech, which some have called the most passionate of his presidency.

Graig Graziosi and Oliver O’Connell round up the reaction here:

With the Republican Party highly likely to regain control of the House of Representatives next year, the future of the select committee investigating the Capitol riot might be in the balance. But as John Bowden writes, the panel is motoring ahead with its work – and crucially, it seems there is little chance that Donald Trump will be able to stop its members from obtaining the records they have requested.

Representative Abigail Spanberger has posted a thread detailing her experience on 6 January 2021, when she was one of several members of the House of Representatives stranded in their chamber’s gallery.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warns that with lies about the 2020 election still circulating and basic facts constantly contested by right-wing officeholders and media outlets, the events of the insurrection could yet come to seem like “the norm”.

He also argues that voting rights must be enacted – and that Mitch McConnell’s plan to reform the Electoral Count Act would “effectively guarantee that partisan state legislatures could overturn the election without fear of recourse. Look at what it does. It’s a cynical idea.”

At noon, the Senate will hold a moment of silence in memory of those who died on 6 January 2021 and in its aftermath.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Chuck Schumer describes the day as “the best of times and the worst of times”. First, he learned 12 hours before the attack that the Democrats had a Senate majority because of their twin victories in Georgia; then within 45 minutes of the start of the vote-counting, a police officer grabbed him and took him out of the Senate chamber for his own safety.

“I was within 30 feet of these nasty, racist, bigoted insurrectionists,” he says, recalling how one rioter reportedly shouted “there’s the big Jew” upon seeing him. “Bigotry against one is bigotry against all.”

Jacob Chansley, the so-called ‘QAnon Shaman’ who entered the Senate chamber wearing facepaint, horns, furs and no shirt, has said that he wishes he had conducted himself differently on the day of the insurrection.

Speaking to Inside Edition, Chansley mused: “In retrospect, one thing I can say that I regret is not working to ensure that there was far more peace on that day. Had I known what was going to happen, I would have stepped in before any barricades were breached.”

He is appealing his prison sentence, alleging “ineffective counsel”. During the run-up to his plea bargain and sentencing, his attorney called Capitol rioters “all f***ing short-bus people” and “people with brain damage”.

One of the subtler elements of Joe Biden’s speech was his decision not to use his predecessor’s name. PBS News’s Yamiche Alcindor relays the president’s explanation.