A loudspeaker in the Senate press gallery crackled with a dire warning on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, and a voice announced a lockdown as I sat at my desk in the Capitol.
“External security threat,” I scribbled in my notepad, writing down what I was hearing. “Stay away from exterior windows and doors.” And then: “Seek cover.”
That was how I knew four years ago that something had gone wrong — very wrong — during what is typically a perfunctory event on Capitol Hill: certifying the results of the presidential election.
This year, Jan. 6 reverted to what it always had been: a constitutionally mandated, legally proscribed and routine step in the peaceful transfer of power, whereby Congress formalizes what has already been decided in a democratic election.
In the riot’s aftermath, some Republicans tried to recast the day as a peaceful protest or even a routine tour. Mr. Trump, who has vowed to pardon those prosecuted for participating, called it a “day of love.”
In many ways, the country and the Congress has moved on. There are fewer mentions of the violence of four years ago. Democrats who once said they couldn’t work with so-called election deniers now find themselves needing to partner with Republicans, who will control all the levers of government after Mr. Trump is sworn in on Jan. 20.
Mr. Trump, who has sought to rewrite the history of that dark day, has returned to the presidency — legitimately. The American people, who still condemn the attack in polls, decided they nonetheless preferred him to Democrats on issues including the border and the economy.
But it’s worth remembering what it was like on Jan. 6, 2021, when the Capitol endured the largest attack since the War of 1812, and reflecting on how different things were on Monday.
After the loudspeaker announced the lockdown four years ago, I jumped out of my chair in the Senate Press Gallery on the third floor of the Capitol to see a horde of Mr. Trump’s supporters storming toward the building, kicking over bike racks as they trampled the pristinely maintained grounds. I had covered large protests before, but this had clearly taken a dark, more violent turn.
This year, the Capitol grounds were a mostly silent and empty expanse blanketed in snow from a major winter storm, fortified and mostly closed off to the public by huge black fences, keeping them clear of protesters or any hint of disruption.
Back then, I rushed into the Senate gallery overlooking the floor where senators, including a number of octogenarians, were assembled, guarded by Capitol Police officers. Aides locked the doors against the encroaching mob, and I could feel panic start to surge inside the chamber. Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, was looking at her phone and called out, “Shots fired!” alerting fellow lawmakers to the escalating danger.
We learned later that a Capitol Police officer had shot and killed a rioter outside the House chamber.
On Monday, Ms. Klobuchar was among the lawmakers taking part in a recitation of each state’s electoral votes to certify Mr. Trumps election. She calmly declared that each one she read was “in regular in form and authentic,” before the count moved on without interruption.
In 2021, Vice President Mike Pence had been presiding over the Senate when security officials hastily hustled him out of the chamber while police officers began pressing senators to evacuate as the mob closed in. “We’ve got to move, senator,” one officer told Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Democrat, pulling him by his collar. Police helped elderly senators up from their desks and out through a side door.
From the balcony, some reporters began calling down to the chamber below, asking where we should go. “What about us?!”
We were directed toward the Capitol’s labyrinthine basement tunnel system.
As lawmakers and staff rushed out, some Senate aides had the poise to snatch the boxes containing the Electoral College certificates, making sure that the vandals could not literally steal the results of the election.
Outside the Senate chamber, more than an hour into the riot, I was finally reunited with my phone, which I had left at my desk in haste. There was a flood of text messages from my colleagues, editors and friends, some begging me to just respond and let them know I was OK.
Only later would I learn we had left the chamber just steps ahead of the mob.
On Monday, the scene was far different. Ms. Harris stoically and smoothly presided over the formalization of her own defeat without any interruptions, as Mr. Schumer sat looking on, having declared, “Our loyalties lie with the Constitution and the rule of law.” The mahogany boxes holding the electoral votes sat where they belonged on the House rostrum.
Reporters sat gazing down from the House gallery above, tapping away on their laptops with no hint of danger in the air.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former G.O.P. leader, was not even at the Capitol to witness Monday’s proceedings. Four years ago, he delivered a scathing speech on the Senate floor warning that if Republicans followed Mr. Trump’s lies of a stolen election, democracy would enter a “death spiral.” That was just moments before a security officer practically lifted him off his feet while whisking him away from rioters who had breached the Senate.
Soon after that, I finally made it to a secure area, sat down on the floor and was flooded more by anger than fear.
Thousands of people had come to one of the most important places in American democracy, smashing windows, wrecking offices and injuring people for what they thought was a righteous cause — but one built on a foundation of lies.
As a journalist, it was clear what my role was: I opened my laptop.
In that secure area, I and the other members of the media carried out our own constitutional duty under the First Amendment. We weren’t heroes; that title goes to the officers from the Capitol and Metropolitan Police departments who beat back the attackers and eventually ensured the transfer of power that day between presidential administrations. I got to know several of them in the months that followed.
But we did our jobs as best we could. The room filled with tactical law enforcement team members carrying long guns.
In a secure room adjacent to ours, senators had begun speaking in hushed tones about whether and how to proceed with the electoral count. We heard applause erupt in what we would later learn was the moment they had decided they would return to the Senate chamber that night to finish counting the votes.
“We will not be deterred from finishing the job,” Ms. Klobuchar told me then.
It would take hours for lawmakers to approve Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. Some Republicans continued to object to the former vice president’s win.
It was finally over at 3:41 a.m. on Jan. 7 — about 14 hours after the session began.
On Monday, the same task took 30 minutes.
