President Donald Trump’s administration marked the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol by launching a website that claims Democrats “staged the real insurrection” by later certifying former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
The website, hosted on the White House’s domain and promoted through official government social media accounts, describes rioters as “peaceful patriotic protestors.” It argues that Democrats — many of whom were targeted during the violence — “masterfully reversed reality” by portraying the riot as a coup attempt.
House Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi is featured prominently at the top of the site alongside members of the House select committee that investigated the attack. The site accuses the committee of “producing a scripted TV spectacle to fabricate an ‘insurrection’ narrative and pin all blame on President Trump.”
During a speech on Tuesday, Jan. 6, Trump said the media failed to accurately report his words from five years ago and sought to place responsibility on Pelosi.
“Do you know that the news never reported the words walk or march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol?” Trump said at the Kennedy Center, per Politico. “Do you know that they never reported it? It’s a scandal.”
He also claimed, “They never reported that Nancy Pelosi was offered 10,000 soldiers, National Guard soldiers, whatever you want.”
Ian Krager, a spokesperson for Pelosi, responded in a statement to Politico, calling “ongoing attempts to whitewash the deadly insurrection… shameful, unpatriotic, and pathetic.”
“Numerous independent fact-checkers have confirmed again and again that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination on January 6th,” Krager added. “Cherry-picked, out-of-context clips do not change the fact that the Speaker of the House is not in charge of the security of the Capitol Complex — on January 6th or any other day of the week.”
On the website, the administration also blames Capitol Police officers for the violence, despite their efforts to protect lawmakers. It characterizes former Vice President Mike Pence’s certification of Biden’s win as an “act of cowardice and sabotage.” The site’s timeline further claims that 2020 is “considered the greatest election theft in U.S. history, with widespread fraud deliberately ignored by courts, officials and the media.”
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The website lists some members of the pro-Trump mob who died during the riot or in connection with it, but does not mention that nearly 140 police officers were injured that day. It also omits officers who died in the aftermath, while asserting in its timeline that “zero law enforcement officers lost their lives,” notes The New York Times.
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Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who was pepper-sprayed and died the day after the riot, is not mentioned on the site. Four other officers later died by suicide.
“Trump recognizes that he has not shaken Jan. 6,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, whose image appears on the website as a select committee member, told The Hill on Tuesday. “The fact that they’re having to put up a little propaganda site on the White House web demonstrates how insecure they are about the situation.”
Hours after Trump’s second term began in January 2025, he pardoned nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the riot as one of his first official acts.
