VP Mike Pence, as the Senate session resumed following the evacuations of the complex, said: “To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, you did not win.”
After a mob incited by President Donald Trump breached the US Capitol on Wednesday and forced lawmakers to evacuate both the House and Senate chambers, the Congress has formally affirmed President-elect Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, completing a final step in the electoral process.
Presiding over the count conducted by a joint session of Congress, Vice President Mike Pence announced that Biden had won the Electoral College vote early Thursday after the House and Senate easily defeated Republican objections lodged against the votes sent by two states, Arizona and Pennsylvania.
After proceedings were halted for more than five hours while lawmakers were forced into lockdown by pro-Trump rioters that overran US Capitol Police, the late-night session was anything but the normal routine for counting Electoral College votes.
Nearly six hours after it abruptly recessed, the Senate reconvened just after 8 pm local time, with lawmakers vowing to finish what they had started.
VP Mike Pence, as the Senate session resumed following the evacuations of the complex, said: “To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, you did not win.”
“As we reconvene in this chamber, the world will again witness the resilience and strength of our democracy, even in the wake of unprecedented violence and vandalism in this Capitol,” Pence said.
The Senate voted 93 to 6 to dismiss the objection raised by Republicans to Arizona’s results, and 92 to 7 to reject the objection to Pennsylvania.
In the House, a majority of Republicans voted to object to the results, but they were still soundly rejected, 303 to 121 for Arizona and 282 to 138 for Pennsylvania, with all Democrats in opposition.
The unprecedented violence prompted several Senate Republicans who had planned to object to decide they would no longer do so.
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