5 years later, a stubborn fight over the basic facts of the Jan. 6 riot

Five years after the historic and damaging attack on the U.S. Capitol, millions of dollars in damages have been repaired and clean-up has long been completed. Many of the physical injuries have healed. And President Trump's pardons ended the largest criminal prosecution in American history, while freeing more than 1,500 defendants from criminal liability.

What remains is a poisonous and lingering resentment over the riot and an ongoing battle to preserve the basic facts of what transpired on Jan. 6, 2021.

The president and some of his supporters have accused the Biden administration of weaponizing the Department of Justice against Jan. 6 defendants. In the process, Mr. Trump and surrogates have espoused arguments that are inconsistent with the facts of the cases, the timeline of events and public statistics from the Capitol siege prosecutions.

In a letter to colleagues last week, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced a public meeting, with witness testimony, will be held on Tuesday to rebut claims about Jan. 6. Jeffries's letter said the meeting would "expose the election deniers who hold high-level positions of significance in the executive branch and detail the threats to public safety posed by the hundreds of violent felons who were pardoned on the President's first day in office."

Dan Hodges, a local Washington, D.C., police officer who was injured by the attack of the mob, said he is frustrated by an ongoing "rewriting" of the history of Jan. 6.  

"Five years ago I thought: This has to be the most videotaped crime in American history. It's just so much evidence. There's no way anyone can possibly deny what occurred here," Hodges said in an interview. "But that's exactly what's happening."

Hodges, who spoke with CBS News as a citizen, separate from his ongoing role as a police officer, also said, "The attack was everything it appeared to be on television." 

Mr. Trump himself — who has referred to Jan. 6 defendants as "hostages" for years — attempted to reframe or rewrite some of the key issues of the Jan. 6 prosecutions in the hours and days after issuing the pardons. He has claimed many defendants were actually innocent, were only responsible for "minor" infractions or were held in unfairly harsh conditions.

At a January 2025 news conference, Mr. Trump said: "These people have already served years in prison, and they've served them viciously." He also claimed Jan 6 rioters had "served years in jail," then added that "murderers don't even go to jail in this country." 

His statements excluded the more than 1,000 Jan 6 riot defendants who did not serve years in custody, and the hundreds of pardoned Capitol riot defendants who had not yet gone on trial or who served prison terms for cases in which they pleaded guilty.

Mr. Trump also defended his acts of clemency during the same press conference by saying: "It's a disgusting prison. It's been horrible. It's inhumane. It's been a terrible, terrible thing."

The president did not specify which prison to which he was referring. The imprisoned Jan. 6 riot defendants served time in a wide range of federal prison facilities nationwide, all of which are operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Those include prisons in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, California, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan and Florida, none of which has been singled out as "inhumane" by the prison bureau, which Trump now oversees.

Although the local Washington, D.C., jail received criticism for its conditions in 2021 and 2022, when some Jan. 6 defendants were temporarily held there, the jail is not a prison. Nor was the jail used for those who were sentenced to federal prison terms.

In a Fox News interview just days after returning to office, Mr. Trump justified his pardons by arguing, "most of the people were absolutely innocent," which runs counter to many defendants' decision to plead guilty and admit to crimes. His statement is also belied by the perfect trial record secured by prosecutors, who obtained convictions in 100% of the jury trials held for Jan. 6 defendants who pleaded not guilty.

During that interview, Mr. Trump also defended his pardoning of violent rioters who assaulted police, saying: "They were very minor incidents." 

According to court records reviewed by CBS News, the injuries to police included violent assaults with a series of makeshift weapons, including bats, poles, bear spray, sticks, chemicals and fists. Around 140 police officers were injured, with some facing cracked ribs, smashed spinal disks and brain injuries, according to the union representing Capitol Police officers. Multiple police officers also died by suicide in the weeks after the siege.

In an October 2025 social media post, Mr. Trump claimed the Biden administration had placed 274 FBI agents among the crowd at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, even though Biden had not yet been sworn in as president. Baseless claims that the riot was orchestrated by the FBI have circulated for years, though Trump-nominated FBI Director Kash Patel has said the 274 agents were deployed to the Capitol for "crowd control."

Some riot defendants have characterized the prosecutions as "weaponization" of the federal government by the Justice Department. Others have used the term "staged," "fake" or "fed-surrection" to allege that the violent riot did not happen as it appeared to on live television across America.

"Are we not supposed to believe what we saw with our own eyes?," asked Rep. Bennie Thompson, a longtime House Democrat from Mississippi who chaired the former House January 6th Select Committee, which aimed to dispel myths and fake claims about the riot. "We have to keep repeating it, because these individuals with larger microphones keep calling it 'fake news.'"

The White House declined to comment on remarks Mr. Trump has made about Jan. 6 or those involved, but spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement:  "The media's continued obsession with January 6 is one of the many reasons trust in the press is at historic lows — they aren't covering issues that the American people actually care about. President Trump was resoundingly reelected to enact an agenda based on securing the border, driving down crime, and restarting our economy — the President is delivering." 

House Democrats are expected to call a number of the police victims of the siege as public witnesses at their Tuesday public meeting. Several congressional staffers familiar with the matter told CBS News they expect Democrats to issue public statements Monday and Tuesday to reinforce the facts of the Jan. 6 siege, amid Mr. Trump's claims minimizing the riot.

House Speaker Mike Johnson's office did not respond to requests for comment about Democrats' planned public meeting or about plans for any formal events to mark the siege.

Sen. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, called Hodges to testify at an October 2025 hearing on political violence. Welch said he wanted the officer's testimony to be public to dispel false narratives about Jan. 6. Several conservatives also testified at the hearing, during which Republican lawmakers highlighted acts of political violence and threats against Mr. Trump and other right-leaning public figures.

"There's a process to rewrite what happened on January 6 and essentially erase it," Welch told CBS News. "And that's wrong. They're literally in the process of re-writing it."

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat who previously chaired a Senate committee that conducted a bipartisan investigation into security failures on Jan. 6, told CBS News, "Congress and Vice President Pence did our job that day: democracy prevailed."

"While we have come together on a bipartisan basis to strengthen our electoral process, the President's pardons and attempts to rewrite history are an insult to law enforcement and undermine our democracy," Klobuchar said.