Yesterday marked the five-year anniversary of one of the most shameful days in American history: the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Time has not diluted our conviction that what we witnessed five years ago was an unprecedented attack on American democracy fueled by Donald Trump’s lies.
For this week’s Closer Look, we’d like to share some key facts about what occurred on that fateful day and in its aftermath, particularly since Donald Trump returned to office for his second term. We’ll then discuss our five-year takeaway from it all: thanks to extreme wealth inequality, we now live in a country where some people—namely, our authoritarian president and his wealthy and well-connected friends—really are above the law.
What happened on January 6th and in the years since?
In the days and weeks following his defeat in the 2020 election, then-President Trump promulgated the categorically false idea that the election had been “stolen” and that he was the rightful winner of the race. He rallied thousands of his supporters to come to Washington, DC on January 6, 2021. That date was specifically chosen because, historically, that is when both chambers of Congress meet to count the Electoral College votes and formally declare the next president.
Despite warnings from security about armed rallygoers, President Trump proceeded with his speech at the Ellipse. Immediately following it, roughly 2,500 of Trump’s supporters then stormed the Capitol to prevent the lawful and peaceful transition of power. Among other things, they vandalized the building; assaulted both Capitol and Metropolitan police officers with bats, pipes, and chemical sprays; created a gallows and noose on the Capitol grounds for then-Vice President Pence; and planted pipe bombs in the area. As a result of the chaos and violence, nine people died and 174 police officers were injured.
The events surrounding January 6th spurred the largest criminal investigation in American history. No less than 1,583 people were charged in connection with the attempted coup. After investigations by a House committee and Jack Smith, the special counsel to the Justice Department, Trump himself was also indicted on four charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. There was also a case brought forward by residents in Colorado to remove him from the 2024 presidential ballot. While the case won at the Colorado State Supreme Court, it was overturned by the Supreme Court.
Even with mountains of evidence of Donald Trump’s role in inciting and participating in the January 6th insurrection, it did not stop him from winning re-election in 2024. And because of a 2024 Supreme Court ruling that declared presidents to be immune from criminal prosecution for their “official” acts as president, Smith’s case against Trump was dropped. Hours after Trump was sworn in, he pardoned nearly all January 6th rioters. He also went on to fire prosecutors involved in the January 6th investigations.
Equally as disturbing, Trump has also bent over backwards to whitewash the tragedy that unfolded five years ago under his watch, albeit in conflicting ways. At times, he has painted the attack as a “day of love,” while at others, he has insisted he had nothing to do with the violence—like he did yesterday on the official White House website.
Trump and his friends are practically above the law
Many of us thought the disturbing scenes that unfolded at the Capitol on January 6th would spell the end for Donald Trump. No one could incite a coup against the United States government and not end up behind bars. No one could incite an insurrection that large and that grotesquely violent and become the president again. But we were wrong, and here we are.
Trump has trampled all over our economy and democracy and broken all sorts of national and international laws and customs and he is still the president.
Trump and his administration have brazenly attempted to stifle free speech—remember the Jimmy Kimmel fiasco?—and he is still the president.
Trump has blatantly targeted his political enemies—whether it be elite universities or specific people like James Comey or Letitia James—and he is still the president.
Trump and his administration have ignored court orders—and he is still the president.
He and his family are openly profiteering off his presidency—the Trump Organization’s income soared no less than $864 million in the first six months of 2025—and he is still the president.
He has floated the very unconstitutional idea of remaining in office for a third term and he is still the president.
He recently suggested cancelling the 2026 elections and he is still the president.
He toed the line of campaign finance legality in 2024 by promising donors tax cuts if he got elected. He delivered on that promise big time and he is still the president.
He manufactured an emergency to bypass Congress and implement his costly tariffs and he is still the president.
He has been accused of sexual misconduct by dozens of women; scammed people through his fake university; been accused of violating international law with his recent actions in Venezuela; and been accused of all sorts of obscenities in what’s been released from the Epstein files…and he is still the president.
Proximity to Trump has proven just as beneficial when it comes to avoiding consequences for flouting laws. He has doled out pardons left and right in his second term to his wealthy and well-connected friends. In November, he pardoned his associates involved with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In October, he pardoned the head of a crypto firm which had struck a deal with his family’s own crypto start-up. In May, he pardoned a former nursing home executive after the executive’s mother attended a top-dollar fundraising dinner for Trump.
In short, judging by the way Donald Trump and his allies avoid any meaningful consequences for their transgressions, they are in every practical sense above the law.
It’s all thanks to extreme wealth
In a 2018 speech, former President Obama famously said, “It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause.” He was right on the mark. Donald Trump may be leading the charge against American democracy today, but he found his way to the front of the line only because of extreme wealth inequality.
Donald Trump likes to paint himself as a self-made billionaire, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We probably wouldn’t know who Donald Trump is today if it weren’t for the $413 million he received from his father’s real estate empire which buoyed his rise to fame. In the last election cycle, Trump was propelled to the White House by his circle of billionaire friends. Billionaires like Stephen Schwarzman and Nelson Peltz heavily criticized Trump in the aftermath of January 6th, but ultimately fell in line behind him in the 2024 election. Trump also received no less than $565 million from billionaire families.
Trump also received his ticket back to the White House thanks to the other side of the inequality coin. Millions of working people were so frustrated by the economy and the skyrocketing cost of living, and taken in by Trump’s (empty) promises to do something about it, that they came out in droves for him on Election Day.
The rise of Donald Trump and his lawlessness might have been prevented if officials had used our tax and wage systems over the years to check growing and extreme inequality. The same goes for reforming our campaign finance system.
At our November event—MONEY. Message. Millionaires.—Vanessa Williamson, a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, spoke poignantly about the relationship between taxation and democracy. She told our crowded room:
“Throughout American history, opponents of democracy, from slaveholders to Gilded Age industrialists to today, have tried to undermine the government’s capacity to tax so they could keep power in their own hands. You see the same strategy again and again. On the one hand, undermine elections. On the other, undermine the tax system. That way, you never really lose power. Because the fight for democracy isn’t just about who can vote. It’s about whether the government that those voters choose has the power to act. And that power comes from taxation. That’s why the fight for taxation is the fight for democracy.
Oligarchs always want to keep an elected government poor because public power threatens private power. A government that can raise real revenue is a government that can regulate, can tax, and can hold the wealthy accountable. A government that can tax can provide public goods like schooling and health care that give people the security and the freedom to act as citizens. So if you want to maintain an oligarchy, you must starve the state of revenue.”
The United States is not alone in this fight—countries across the globe are grappling with the vulnerability to authoritarianism created by extreme inequality and wealth concentration. But that doesn’t mean we still shouldn’t be surprised that the tax, wage, and campaign finance policy decisions our leaders have made for the past 60 years led us to this point.
Conclusion
The first step in solving any problem involves accepting you have one in the first place. It’s hard to do, but we must accept that we have a Donald Trump problem in America. We must accept that Trump and his rich friends are acting above the law. And we must accept that extreme wealth inequality is the root cause of this mess.
We won’t solve America’s Donald Trump problem and its root cause overnight. But that’s not going to stop us from doing everything we can to get the word out about it.
We’re encouraged by the example of Pamela Hemphill. She is a January 6th rioter who has since expressed remorse for her role in the attack and even went so far as to reject Trump’s pardon. It takes an enormous amount of courage to stand up to your enemies. It takes just as much, if not more, to stand up to your friends, and we commend Pamela for her actions.
We would know. Like Pamela, as “class traitors,” we are standing up to our wealthy and powerful friends. We are trying to get the word out about the dangers of wealth being concentrated in the hands of the few, and how it’s led to the authoritarianism we’re witnessing in America today under Trump. It’s not always easy, but there is so much on the line that we feel a patriotic duty to do so.
January 6th will forever be a stain in our history books. While we cannot change what happened that day, we can remain wholeheartedly committed to reducing inequality and preventing our democracy from ever being threatened again by the likes of a would-be Donald Trump. Because no one should be above the law, in any sense.