Washington (United States) (AFP) - Washington on Tuesday marked five years since a mob overran the US Capitol, with rioters pardoned by Donald Trump retracing their steps even as Democrats revive hearings to hold the president accountable.

The anniversary highlighted a nation divided between irreconcilable accounts of an attack that reshaped American politics – one supported by official findings of a violent bid to overturn an election, the other portraying it as a protest unjustly criminalized.

“Five years ago today, a violent mob brutally attacked the US Capitol on January 6. Their mission was to overturn a free and fair election. We will never allow extremists to whitewash their treachery,” top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries posted on X.

Trump supporters gathered in Washington on January 6, 2021 after the president urged them to protest Congress’s certification of his election defeat to Joe Biden.

Several thousand breached the Capitol grounds, overwhelming police lines and wounding more than 140 officers, smashing windows and doors, ransacking offices and forcing lawmakers into hiding as the electoral count was halted for hours.

Inside the Capitol on Tuesday, Democrats convened an unofficial hearing featuring police, former lawmakers and civilians who experienced the violence firsthand.

And they later held a candlelit vigil, joined by relatives of five police officers whose deaths on the day and in the aftermath have been directly or indirectly linked to the violence.

“While Donald Trump pardons insurrectionists, lets those who attack our police officers walk free, we stand here with our first responders.

“We’ll make sure that your sacrifices that day are never forgotten, or will we ever, ever forget the lives of those we lost in connection with the attack.”

- ‘Martyrs’ -

Many involved in the original congressional investigation say the aim is not to relitigate the past but to prevent it from being erased – particularly after Trump returned to office and pardoned or commuted sentences for nearly all defendants charged in connection with the attack.

A new Democratic report documents dozens of pardoned rioters later charged with new crimes – from child sexual assault and rape to conspiracy to murder FBI agents, robbery and reckless homicide – and the party warns that the clemency risks normalizing political violence.

Outside the building Trump supporters, including figures linked to the far-right Proud Boys, staged a march retracing the route taken by rioters in 2021.

A crowd of at most 200 marchers – a fraction of the attendance on the day they were commemorating – donned Trump’s trademark red “Make America Great Again” hats and waved banners demanding “justice 4 jan 6ers.”

Tami Jackson, who flew from Texas, said she was rallying “in remembrance of the people that lost their lives that day” while her husband Brian called some of the rioters “martyrs.”

The event was promoted by former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy before Trump pardoned him.

Organizers said they wanted to honor those who died, including pro-Trump rioter Ashli Babbitt, and protest what they describe as excessive force by police and politically motivated prosecutions.

The competing events mirror a broader political dispute, with Democrats saying Trump incited the attack to overturn the election. Republicans reject that view, instead citing security failures and criticizing the Justice Department.

Trump alluded briefly to the riot in remarks at a House Republican strategy retreat, accusing Democrats and the media of misrepresenting his role in the violence, while the White House published its own account of the riot that was riddled with inaccuracies.

Former special counsel Jack Smith has said the attack would not have occurred without Trump, but abandoned the federal case after the Republican leader’s reelection, in line with Justice Department policy barring prosecution of a sitting president.

Trump was impeached soon after the riot by the Democratic-controlled House but acquitted by the Republican-led Senate.