Jan. 6, 2021: Five Years Later
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 6 January 2026
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Listen to NPR's investigation into what happened on Jan. 6, 2021.
This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and investigative correspondent Tom Dreisbach.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Want to get strong in 2026? |
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| 0:16.3 | This week on the Life Kid podcast. |
| 0:18.7 | Listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:26.5 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. |
| 0:33.3 | I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And NPR investigative correspondent Tom Dreisbach is with us. Hi, Tom. |
| 0:39.6 | Hey, guys. |
| 0:40.5 | We are recording this at 1020 a.m. on January 6th, 2020. |
| 0:46.7 | Today on the show, we're looking back at the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. |
| 0:52.0 | It was five years ago today that a mob of supporters of |
| 0:56.0 | President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in an effort to delay or flat out overturn the certification |
| 1:02.3 | of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost and Joe Biden won. Tom, you and your colleagues |
| 1:10.1 | have been researching and documenting what happened that day and in the aftermath and talking to those who took part. |
| 1:18.7 | Briefly, if you can, remind us of how that day played out. |
| 1:23.5 | Yeah, it was a big day. So as brief as I can, there's the political track of what was happening that day, this pressure campaign by President Trump to pressure Mike Pence, then the vice president, to overturn the election. Pence ultimately said that would be unconstitutional. He could not take action during the certification. And then there was the rally that took place. And even before Trump finished his speech, violence began. |
| 1:45.3 | Rioters overwhelmed police lines at the Capitol. They ultimately broke into the building, |
| 1:50.1 | stormed it, and violence ensued for several hours that ultimately injured around 140 police |
| 1:55.8 | officers. Some of them have injuries that have lasted a lifetime. And after that, we've been kind of reckoning with that day ever since. |
| 2:03.3 | Yeah, I want to talk about two main groups of people who are part of the story here. There are the alleged rioters, and there are the law enforcement officers who responded to the riot, who were there to defend the Capitol that day. So let's start with the people |
| 2:18.9 | who marched on the Capitol. Carrie, the Justice Department, primarily under the Biden administration, |
... |
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