In an attempt to rewrite history, the White House published a new web page on January 6th,

calling the people who charged the Capitol and assaulted Capitol police, quote, unfairly targeted, overcharged, and used as political examples, end quote.

Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt.

I'm Dana Taylor.

Today is Friday, January 9th, 2026.

What really happened five years ago on January 6th, 2021?

Is this revisionist history or are there two legitimate sides to this story?

For more on this, I'm now joined by USA Today, White House correspondent, Bart Jansen,

and national correspondent, Sarah Wire.

Thank you both so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thanks, pretty much.

Bart, let's set the scene.

What led up to the events here on January 6th, 2021?

Well, Trump lost the 2020 election. And after that loss, he continued to argue that voting

irregularities cost him the election unfairly in a half dozen toss-up states that he considered competitive and that he basically

has argued since then that he won. He did not, but his lawyers fielded 60 lawsuits to try to

challenge the results. They lost in all but one of them. His campaign lawyers, such as Rudy Giuliani,

never produced evidence of widespread voter fraud. And so the election results were upheld,

and Joe Biden became president. But before the inauguration on January 20th, Trump organized

a rally at the ellipse near the White House

to give a speech on January 6th when the electoral college votes were going to be counted in

...