Trump win made official as Harris presides over election certification four years after Jan 6 riot

Exactly four years after a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters perpetrated the worst attack on the U.S. Capitol since Major General Robert Ross ordered British soldiers to set it ablaze more than two centuries before, Vice President Kamala Harris presided over a joint session of Congress to give Trump the peaceful transfer of power she was denied after the 2020 election.

Harris — who four years earlier was both vice president-elect and the sitting junior senator from California — led senators from their chamber across the Capitol’s ornate rotunda into the House chamber at exactly 1 p.m. Monday, the date laid out in American law for Congress to officially certify the election of the next president and vice president.

She smiled as she entered the chamber to polite applause from both sides of the aisle. She walked past a beaming Marjorie Taylor Greene, an outspoken supporter of the rioters who stormed the same room four years ago. JD Vance, vice president-elect, entered shortly after and took his seat in the front row. Harris stood alongside Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson as both watched as the Electoral College votes were counted.

Unlike four years ago, when then-vice president Mike Pence read out the results and asked if senators or representatives had any objections to each state’s electoral vote totals, this year’s joint session employed a new procedure devised by lawmakers in the wake of Trump’s effort to overturn the election results four years ago.

Though Harris called the joint session to order, she played no role in the counting or reading of the Electoral College vote totals. Instead, selected tellers — members of the House and Senate chosen by leadership — read out the states and their vote results in alphabetical order.

While Pence had taken a moment to ask for objections and read other parliamentary language about the provenance of the electoral certificates, Harris did not interject as each state’s results were called out.

Trump’s vote total passed the requisite 270 needed for him to claim the presidency after the results from the state of Texas were read.

Once all the states had been read out, Harris called for the House and Senate tellers to report the result. She then read out the words that sealed her defeat, telling the joint session: “The votes for president of the United States are as follows: Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 312 votes. Kamala D. Harris of the State of California has received 226 votes.”

Harris then read out the result for the next vice president, telling the assembled House and Senate members that Vance had received 312 votes while her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, had earned 226.

“This announcement of the state of the vote by the President of the Senate shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons elected president and vice president of the United States, each for a term beginning on the 20th day of January, 2025 and shall be entered. Together with the list of the votes on the journals of the House and the Senate,” she said.

It was a process that took just half an hour — a far cry from the nearly 15 hours that elapsed from the time Pence gaveled in the joint session in 2021 to when he declared Biden and Harris the winners in the wee hours of January 7 after the riot by the then-president’s supporters forced lawmakers to shelter in place after fleeing the House and Senate chambers for their lives.

Unlike four years ago, not a single senator or representative objected to the certification, and Harris was able to exit after completing her duties.

In a pre-recorded video message, she had said she would “perform her constitutional duty as Vice President of the United States to certify the results of the 2024 election” and called her role “a sacred obligation—one I will uphold guided by love of country, loyalty to our Constitution, and my unwavering faith in the American people,”

“The peaceful transfer of power is one of the most fundamental principles of American democracy. As much as any other principle, it is what distinguishes our system of government from monarchy or tyranny,”  she said.

Harris echoed those comments later in the day in brief remarks to reporters after the joint session had come to a close.

She said it had been “obviously a very important day” and stressed that the drama-free certification that had taken place “should be the norm” and is “what the American people should be able to take for granted … that there will be a peaceful transfer of power.”

“Today, I did what I have done my entire career, which is take seriously the oath that I have taken many times to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, which included today performing my constitutional duties to ensure that the people of America, the voters of America, will have their votes counted, that those votes matter, and that they will determine that the outcome of an election,” she said.

Pence, Harris’s predecessor, posted a message to X (formerly Twitter) calling the “peaceful transfer of power” a “hallmark of our democracy” and praising representatives and senators for crtifying the election “without controversy or objection.”

“I welcome the return of order and civility to these historic proceedings and offer my most sincere congratulations and prayers to President Donald J. Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance on their election to lead this great Nation,” he said.

He also offered commendation to the House and Senate members — and Harris — who he said “did their duty under the Constitution of the United States” with Harris’s actions being “particularly admirable” as she presided — like Pence had — “over the certification of a presidential election that she lost.”