Violent insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump scale the west wall of the the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6. (Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press)

It took more than three days after the Nov. 3 election for the last of the votes to be counted and for Joe Biden to claim victory with a popular vote margin of nearly 7 million and an electoral college vote of 306-232.

But even before the final count was tallied, Donald Trump and his supporters had already begun to push what has become known as “The Big Lie” — the idea that Trump had actually won the election but that Biden and the Democrats had stolen it away through voter fraud. When his numerous lawsuits were thrown out of courts and even threats failed to change the outcome, it has since become obvious, Trump loyalists put into motion their final Hail Mary pass of a plan, putting out the call for Trump supporters to converge on Washington, D.C., for a “Stop the Steal” rally intended to convince members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence to vote against ratifying election results.

Congress ratifying election results has historically been a rather boring event. But Jan. 6, 2021, was anything but boring. It started with a rally in the Ellipse in President’s Park, where each speaker insisted the election had been stolen and the only way to save the country was to stop Congress from ratifying the votes and thus keep Trump in office. Trump himself urged the crowd to march down to the Capitol and “fight like hell” to stop the ratification, promising — falsely, as it turned out — that he would join them there.

And march they did.

Once the crowd reached the Capitol, they stormed the barricades, attacking Capitol Police officers and breaking through the doors and windows of the building and storming through the halls and offices. Members of the House of Representatives, who were in the process of voting on the ratification, were evacuated from the chamber. Senators were evacuated shortly after as insurrectionists roamed the halls, calling the names of legislators they disliked — such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the young progressive from New York who is a favorite target of the right.

Pence, who had told Trump he would not violate his oath of office by refusing to honor the electoral college vote count, was another high-profile target, with insurrectionists talking openly about finding the vice president and hanging him for treason. They had already constructed a gallows on the Capitol grounds. Even

Trump supporters in Congress, like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, obviously feared for their lives.

Although lawmakers and Capitol Police officials and the mayor of Washington, D.C., asked repeatedly for the National Guard to be called in, it took more than an hour to get formal approval for their deployment and then nearly three more hours for the first guard reinforcements to arrive. By then, the violence had mostly subsided. The D.C. National Guard reports to the president, and despite Trump’s claim that he “immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders,” it has since become plain that he deliberately ignored the pleas for help.

Four people in the crowd of Trump supporters died during the rally: two men had heart attacks, one woman died of an amphetamine overdose, and another, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by a police officer as she tried to climb through a broken window to get into the House chamber while lawmakers were still hiding inside.

Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, sprayed with a chemical irritant by one of the insurrectionists, died about eight hours later at police headquarters after suffering two strokes. Two Capitol Police officers died by suicide within days, and two Metropolitan PD officers who were among those called in as reinforcements died by suicide the following July. More than 140 other officers were injured in the line of duty that day.

Federal prosecutors have said there were at least 1,000 incidents that day that have been classified as assaults on police officers. In addition, officials have said insurrectionists caused at least $1.5 million in damage to the Capitol.

Today, as the year comes to an end, federal prosecutors have charged more than 600 people in more than 40 states — including 61 Texans so far — with participating in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, and arrests continue almost daily. More than 50 have already been convicted or pleaded guilty and been sentenced.

And in Washington, as the one-year anniversary draws near, the U.S. House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 attacks is following a trail of texts, emails, calls and more to determine who actually is responsible for the events of that day — and that includes businessmen, members of the Trump administration and possibly even legislators and Trump himself.

— Tammye Nash