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President Joe Biden said an attack like that on the U.S. Capitol a year ago must never happen again, as he blasted former President Donald Trump for spreading what he called a “web of lies” about the 2020 election.
Marking the first anniversary of the insurrection in a forceful speech from the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, Biden said, “for the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol.”
Also read: Mitch McConnell says the U.S. Capitol was ‘stormed by criminals’ on Jan. 6, 2021
Vice President Kamala Harris also spoke, saying she tells young people that January 6 reveals both the fragility and strength of democracy. “We cannot let our future be decided by those bent on silencing our voices, overturning our votes, and peddling lies and misinformation,” she said, urging lawmakers to move forward with stalled voting-rights bills. Biden made the same plea.
A year ago, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to stop the transfer of power to the new president. The ex-president, who canceled remarks planned for Thursday, has continued to falsely claim that the election was “stolen.”
Without naming Trump, Biden said that “the former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies,” because “his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution.”
Speaking on Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed to hold accountable anyone who was responsible for last year’s insurrection, whether they were physically there or not.
Read: Merrick Garland vows prosecutions ‘at any level’ over Jan. 6 Capitol attack
In a speech to Justice Department employees, Garland said prosecutors remained “committed to holding all January 6th perpetrators, at any level, accountable under law.”
A House panel investigating the insurrection, meanwhile, is preparing to go public, reportedly planning televised hearings and reports that will bring their findings out into the open.
Now read: House Jan. 6 committee prepares to go public as findings mount
Opinion: Civil war in the United States is far more likely than you think. In fact, it may have already begun.
Trump said in a statement on Tuesday that he would be discussing his grievances at a rally he has planned in Arizona later this month. In a statement released after Biden spoke, Trump said: “this political theater is all just a distraction for the fact Biden has completely and totally failed.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
