Trump Called Jan. 6 A 'Beautiful Day.' His Lawyer Calls It A 'Riot.'

Donald Trump has called Jan. 6, 2021, a “beautiful day” and said that the people who committed violence and destruction at the U.S. Capitol are “patriots” and “peaceful people.”

But the former president’s own attorney offered a starkly different description of that day’s events to the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, amid arguments about whether Trump should be barred from the 2024 presidential ballot for instigating an insurrection.

This description of events from the person representing Trump goes against how Trump himself has consistently described Jan. 6 to his fans — as a calm day when his supporters flocked to a Stop the Steal rally in Washington, with “love in their heart” because they believed the 2020 election was “rigged.”

“This was a riot. It was not an insurrection,” said Trump lawyer Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general who is arguing Trump’s case in front of the high court.

“The events were shameful, criminal, violent — all of those things — but did not qualify as insurrection as that term is used in Section 3,” Mitchell added, referring to Article 14, Section 3 of the Constitution, which bars those who have engaged in insurrection from holding office.

How the Supreme Court justices end up interpreting that section will determine whether Trump can remain on the ballot, following a Colorado Supreme Court ruling in December that disqualified him from running.

“For an insurrection, there needs to be an organized, concerted effort to overthrow the government of the U.S. through violence,” Mitchell told liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who explained that Colorado’s high court found that Trump’s supporters engaged in an insurrection by violently attempting “to halt the count” of electoral