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The following individuals and organizations played a role in the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
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Mike Pence, the former vice president of the United States, served a single term with President Trump from 2017–21. Despite years of total loyalty to the former president, he resisted intense pressure after the 2020 election to misuse his ceremonial role in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 to prevent the certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory and obstruct the peaceful transition of power.
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Stewart Rhodes is the founder and leader of the far-right paramilitary group Oath Keepers, which has essentially disbanded in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. In May 2023, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government.
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Longtime Trump ally and political trickster Roger Stone originally created Stop the Steal as a registered 527 organization in 2016—initially to fight GOP efforts to keep Trump off the Republican ticket that year and later to discredit an expected presidential win by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
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On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump supporters in Spokane, Washington gathered for a Stop the Steal rally to protest the certification of President Biden’s electoral victory.
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The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing think tank founded in 1973 and now perhaps best known for generating Project 2025, an extremist set of policy proposals for a second Trump administration.
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Donald Trump is a businessman who served one term as president of the U.S., holding office from Jan. 20, 2017–Jan. 20, 2021. He was the first president in U.S. history with no prior experience in government or the military, and by the end of his term in office, he also became the first president to be impeached twice.
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Both before and after the 2020 election, members of Trump’s administration and inner circle amplified lies about fraud and a stolen election, including people such as Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, economic advisor Peter Navarro, and legal and political advisors John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Rudy Giuliani, Cleta Mitchell, and Sydney Powell, among others.