Klobuchar to play key role on Jan. 6 amid questions over whether Trump, Vance will accept results

Jan. 6, 2025, will mark four years since rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, a day that sent lawmakers into hiding and caused chaos and destruction on Capitol Hill.

Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, then ranking member of the Senate Rules Committee, was one of the four tellers responsible for counting the electoral votes during the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. She has not forgotten what it was like to take cover with fellow lawmakers and walk through broken glass and spray-painted pillars the next day to announce the certified results of the election on Jan. 7, 2021.

Since then, Klobuchar has played a leading role to ensure the U.S. Capitol is secure and better equipped in the event of another insurrection.

“I have a constitutional obligation to make sure that what happen[ed] on Jan. 6 never happens again,” Klobuchar said in an interview.

Now chair of the Senate Committee on Rules, Klobuchar will lead the procession of senators to the House chamber on Jan. 6 and join three other members of Congress in counting Electoral College votes that day. In the years since the insurrection, Klobuchar has also spearheaded legislation and oversight hearings to bolster security that day and, in her role as chair, will play a chief role in ensuring security runs smoothly on Jan. 6, 2025.

She’s also chair of the bipartisan Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which is tasked with everything from picking the inaugural theme to choosing who gets a speaker slot on inauguration day.

So there could be two Minnesotans with an outsized role at the Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration, if the Democratic ticket of Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz wins.

Minnesota’s senior senator will continue to chair the inaugural committee, regardless of who wins the White House and will also likely give a speech during the event.

Klobuchar is favored to win her re-election bid this year. If she were to lose, the ranking member or new chair of the Rules Committee would assume her role on the inaugural committee, her office said.

With less than five weeks until Election Day, the work by Klobuchar and the bipartisan group of lawmakers comes into greater focus as former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance have not explicitly said whether they will accept the results of the 2024 presidential election.

“We’re focused on the future,” Vance said during the vice-presidential debate this week when asked if he would try to challenge the results of the 2024 presidential election even if they were certified by every governor.

Though Vance did not directly respond to the question, he did say that if Walz wins, the governor will have his “prayers,” “best wishes” and “help whenever he wants it.”

The latest Star Tribune/MPR News/KARE 11 poll shows an overwhelming majority of Minnesotans are confident that votes will be counted accurately in the November presidential election, but Klobuchar knows that distrust remains around the country.

“I am concerned when there [are] still people out there already predicting that our elections won’t be accurate when in fact, time and time again, they have been accurate and we have backup paper ballots in nearly every state if there’s a recount and all kinds of protections in place,” she said.

If Trump loses, Klobuchar thinks anything is possible, whether it’s Trump potentially contesting the results of the election or a repeat of Jan. 6, 2021.

“It could easily happen. I can’t predict what will happen, so you just have to be prepared by following the process,” she said. “No matter what he says or anything that happens, we have to make sure that the votes are counted, and then we have to go through the process.”

In the years since the insurrection, a new Capitol police chief has been hired and there’s been new leadership in the House and Senate Sergeant at Arms. Oversight hearings examined what happened on Jan. 6, which Klobuchar helped lead as chair of the Rules Committee. The committee eventually released a report on security failures and outlining recommendations for the future.

President Joe Biden has also since signed Klobuchar’s bill that gives the Capitol police chief the ability to call in the National Guard without needing signoff from the Capitol Police Board.

And the Electoral Count Reform Act now on the books will make it harder for Congress to contest a state’s electoral vote during the Jan. 6 certification. Previously, just one member in the House and one in the Senate could challenge the electoral votes on Jan. 6, but the bill, which Klobuchar co-sponsored, now raises that threshold to one-fifth of each chamber.