The insurrection on January 6, 2021, has become yet another litmus test for Republican presidential candidates and how they respond to questions about the subject may provoke the ire of frontrunner Donald Trump, who’s now facing legal action over his role in the Capitol riot.
The former president was indicted on 1 August for his efforts to overturn the election. The indictment included four counts against Mr Trump and was based on a lot of information unearthed by the now-closed-down House Select Committee investigating the riot.
Announcing the charges against Mr Trump, Special Counsel Jack Smith said: “The attack on our nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.
“It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the US government – the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election,” he added.
The New York Times revealed on Friday that Mr Trump is planning on sitting down for an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson instead of taking part in the debate in Milwaukee on 23 August.
This is a rundown of what the GOP presidential candidates have said about the January 6 insurrection:
Mr Trump has used the riot to spread an alternative reality in which patriotic Americans fought against a massive fraud imposed on the public.
He has promised pardons for the rioters, claiming that they’re political prisoners persecuted for their beliefs and not for the violent rampage that ensued after Mr Trump’s speech on January 6. He has argued that the investigation into his actions is politically motivated. He has been going after President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and he has repeatedly called Mr Smith “deranged”.
Mr Trump is clinging to the lie that the 2020 election was stolen even as he faces mounting legal problems stemming from his actions connected to those falsehoods both at the federal level and at the state level in Georgia.
Just months after the riot, in March 2021, he told The Washington Post that the rioters were a “loving crowd” and that what took place was “too bad”.
He claimed that the violent mob was “ushered in by the police… I mean, in all fairness – the Capitol Police were ushering people in. The Capitol Police were very friendly. You know, they were hugging and kissing”.
Also in 2021, he erroneously told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo that one million people had come to listen to him speak at the so-called “Stop the Steal” rally ahead of the riot.
“There was such love at that rally … They felt the election was rigged. That’s why they were there. And they were peaceful people. These were great people. The crowd was unbelievable,” he claimed.
In October of that year, audio leaked to Axios of Mr Trump speaking to Jonathan Karl of ABC News.
Karl asked about Trump supporters chanting “Hang Mike Pence” at the rally, to which Mr Trump said it was “common sense” as his supporters genuinely believed that the election had been rigged.
Ron DeSantis has played down the events of January 6
The former vice president has turned his role in preventing Mr Trump from overturning the election into a campaign talking point as he paints himself as a defender of the Constitution.
“President Trump was wrong on that day, and he’s still wrong in asserting that I had the right to overturn the election,” Mr Pence said on CNN last month.
He said Mr Trump’s words during the speech ahead of the riot were “reckless,” but he added that “I’m not yet convinced they were criminal”.
“My hope is that the judgment about the president’s actions on January 6 would be left to the American people,” he told NewsNation in July.
Mike Pence, who found himself at the centre of events during the riot, has pushed back at his former boss’s claim that he had the power to overturn the election result
Vivek Ramaswamy has suggested the former president was guilty of bad judgement but not necessarily of a crime
