Washington DC - Washington on Tuesday marks 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 highlights 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.

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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, House Democrats convened an unofficial hearing featuring police, former lawmakers, and civilians who experienced the violence firsthand.

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 nearly all defendants charged in connection with the attack.

A new Democratic report documents dozens of pardoned rioters later charged with new crimes, 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.

The event is being promoted by the group's former leader Enrique Tarrio, who was serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy before Trump pardoned him.

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Organizers say it will 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.

Republican leaders have dismissed Tuesday's hearing as partisan and have shown little appetite for formal commemoration.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, an unswerving Trump ally, has yet to install a plaque honoring Capitol Police officers who defended the building that day, despite a federal law requiring it.

And Republican investigator Barry Loudermilk has argued that January 6 has been used to advance a political narrative against Trump and his allies.

The anniversary arrives against the backdrop of unresolved legal and historical questions.

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 re-election, 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.