There was no official event to memorialize the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, but in Key Biscayne, a small group tried to keep the attack fresh in the public mind, even as U.S. political parties disagreed on a shared history of the assault.

About ten protesters gathered near the entrance to the Village holding signs and asking motorists to honk in support of democracy. Many did, said Carol Lindsey. “A lot of people beeped and put their thumbs up.”  

But not everyone.

“Some people were extremely rude when man threw us the bird a few times and started yelling some profanities at us,” she said. “I believe in freedom of speech, but let’s have some civility,” she said.

Lindsey and others of the Indivisible group were there because of what they see as an ongoing threat to the rule of law. “I know people are very busy with their lives,” she said. “Maybe it’s hard for them to remember what happened that day. But everybody should protect our democracy.”  

A group of rioters break into the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. House of Representatives Jan. 6th committee via KBI)

But she said she is still in disbelief that some in Key Biscayne – where Trump carried the island with a 14-point swing — remain in denial about ongoing threats. The reactions are a local echo of what’s going on in Washington, where the official plaque honoring the police who defended the Capitol in 2021 has never been hung.

The White House itself issued a glossy new report with its own revised history of what happened.

Trump, during a lengthy morning speech to House Republicans away from the Capitol at the rebranded Kennedy Center now carrying his own name, shifted blame for Jan. 6 onto the rioters themselves.

The president said he had intended only for his supporters to go “peacefully and patriotically” to confront Congress as it certified Biden’s win. He blamed the media for focusing on other parts of his speech that day.

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At the same time, Democrats held their own morning meeting at the Capitol, reconvening members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack for a panel discussion. Recalling the history of the day is important, they said, in order to prevent what Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., warned was the GOP’s “Orwellian project of forgetting.”

And the former Miami leader of the militant Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, summoned people for a midday march retracing the rioters’ steps from the White House to the Capitol, this time to honor Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt and those who died in the Jan. 6 siege and its aftermath. More than 100 people gathered, including Babbitt’s mother.

Tarrio and others are putting pressure on the Trump administration to punish officials who investigated and prosecuted the Jan. 6 rioters. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy for orchestrating the Jan. 6 attack, and he is among more than 1,500 defendants who saw their charges dropped when Trump issued a sweeping pardon on his return to the White House last year.

“They should be fired and prosecuted,” Tarrio told the crowd before they arrived at the Capitol, confronted along the way by counter-protesters, and sang the National Anthem.

The White House, in its new report, highlighted the work the president has already done to free those charged and turned the blame on Democrats for certifying Biden’s election victory.

Echoes of 5 years ago

This milestone anniversary carried echoes of the deep differences that erupted that day.

But it unfolds while attention is focused elsewhere, particularly after the U.S. military’s stunning capture of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and Trump’s plans to take over the country and prop up its vast oil industry, a striking new era of American expansionism.

“These people in the administration, they want to lecture the world about democracy when they’re undermining the rule of law at home, as we all will be powerfully reminded,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said on the eve of the anniversary.

Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer held a candlelight vigil outside the Capitol with lawmakers and family members of police officers to mark the anniversary.

Few Republicans joined in the day’s remembrances, and the Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, responding to requests for comment about the delay in hanging the plaque honoring the police at the Capitol, as required by law, said in a statement on the eve of the anniversary that the statute “is not implementable,” and proposed alternatives “also do not comply with the statute.”

Democrats revive an old committee; Republicans lead a new one

At the morning hearing at the Capitol, lawmakers heard from a range of witnesses and others — including former U.S. Capitol Police officer Winston Pingeon, who said as a kid he always dreamed of being a cop. But on that day, he thought he was going to die in the mayhem on the steps of the Capitol.

“I implore America to not forget what happened,” he said, urging the country to find common ground. “I believe the vast majority of Americans have so much more in common than what separates us.”

Also testifying was Pamela Hemphill, a rioter who refused Trump’s pardon, blamed the president for the violence and silenced the room as she apologized to the officer sitting alongside her at the witness table, stifling tears.

“I can’t allow them not be recognized, to be lied about,” Hemphill said about the police who she said also saved her life as she fell and was trampled on by the mob. “Until I can see that plaque get up there, I’m not done.”

Many Republicans reject the narrative that Trump sparked the Jan. 6 attack, and Johnson, before he became the House speaker, had led challenges to the 2020 election. He was among some 130 GOP lawmakers voting that day to reject the presidential results from some states.

Instead, they have focused on security lapses at the Capitol — from the time it took for the National Guard to arrive on the scene to the failure of the police canine units to discover the pipe bombs found that day outside Republican and Democratic party headquarters. The FBI arrested a Virginia man suspected of placing the pipe bombs, and he told investigators last month he believed someone needed to speak up for those who believed the 2020 election was stolen, authorities say.

In the Senate, one Republican Sen. Thom Tillis displayed a replica plaque behind him and said he would try later this week to push a vote ensuring it complies with the law so it can be displayed as intended. Another Republican, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, objected to a separate resolution condemning the Capitol attack.

The aftermath of Jan. 6

At least five people died in the Capitol siege and its aftermath, including Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police while trying to climb through the window of a door near the House chamber, and Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died later after battling the mob. Several law enforcement personnel died later, some by suicide.

The Justice Department indicted Trump on four counts in a conspiracy to defraud voters with his claims of a rigged election in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack.

Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers last month that the riot at the Capitol “does not happen” without Trump. He ended up abandoning the case once Trump was reelected president, adhering to department guidelines against prosecuting a sitting president.

Trump, who never made it to the Capitol that day as he hunkered down at the White House, was impeached by the House on the sole charge of having incited the insurrection. The Senate acquitted him after top GOP senators said they believed the matter was best left to the courts.

Ahead of the 2024 election, the Supreme Court ruled ex-presidents have broad immunity from prosecution.

Lisa Mascaro, AP Congressional Corrpondent, reported from Washington. Tony Winton contributed to this article