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Downtown Washington looked like an entrenched camp on Monday, for the inauguration ceremony, Wednesday under close surveillance, of the American president-elect Joe Biden, who again called for the unification of a divided country.
Thousands of soldiers from the National Guard, the US Army Reserve, have already been deployed, and they will be up to 25,000, Wednesday in the capital, to protect a large “red zone” extending from Capitol Hill, where Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be sworn in at the White House on Wednesday.
The huge esplanade of the “National Mall”, where hundreds of thousands of Americans usually flock to attend the ceremony every four years, is also padlocked.
The streets were mostly empty Monday morning, on the holiday in memory of civil rights icon Martin Luther King.
MLK Day is traditionally a day of volunteering for Americans.
This volunteering “is a fitting way to heal, unify and rebuild this country we love,” Mr. Biden, who wants to reconcile Americans deeply divided after the mandate of Donald Trump.
In the morning he participated in a food distribution for a charity in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In Washingto, armed soldiers and police stationed in front of armored vehicles replace onlookers and traffic in streets blocked by concrete blocks.
At least two armed civilians have been arrested in recent days on the outskirts of the “red zone”.
– False alert –
The city remains traumatized by the murderous assault on the Capitol on January 6, when hundreds of Donald Trump supporters invaded the seat of Congress in an attempt to invalidate the victory of the former vice president of Barack Obama.
The outgoing president, who had called on his supporters to march on Capitol Hill, has been indicted by the House of Representatives for “incitement to insurrection” and his trial before the Senate could open soon after the inauguration of his successor.
Since January 6, nearly 70 protesters have been charged with participating in the violence and hundreds of people are under investigation. Among them, elected officials and former or active members of the police.
In order to ensure that the National Guards do not pose a risk to the security of the inauguration ceremony, the FBI has announced that it is checking the backgrounds of reservists who will be deployed on Wednesday.
“We want to make sure we have the right people in the bubble,” which will protect the president and vice president, General William Walker, head of the Washington National Guard, told Fox News on Monday.
A sign of the tension in the federal capital, a rehearsal of the ceremony in Congress was interrupted Monday morning and the participants were taken to safety due to an “external threat”, according to the police, who turned out to be a false alarm.
– Exceptional ceremony –
This inauguration ceremony will be exceptional in more than one way: it will only attend a limited audience of guests and no public, due to the coronavirus pandemic. A field of over 190,000 flags has been planted on the National Mall esplanade to represent this absent audience.
Also absent, Donald Trump will leave the White House early Wednesday for his residence in Mar-a-Lago, Florida. He will thus become the first president to refuse to attend the swearing-in of his successor since Andrew Johnson in 1869.
In the meantime, the Republican billionaire is preparing to pardon or commute the prison sentences of a hundred people, according to several media.
In recent months, Donald Trump has pardoned collaborators and relatives convicted in the investigation into a possible collusion between Russia and his campaign team in 2016. All had in common their lack of cooperation with the justice system.
The list, which could be made public on Tuesday, could contain the names of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, that of rapper Lil Wayne, who faces up to 10 years in prison for possession of a firearm, or that of ‘a famous doctor convicted of fraud.
He could also pardon some of his supporters prosecuted for the assault on the Capitol.
“What if he pardoned those people who are Capitol Hill terrorists?” “, Was alarmed Sunday the leader of the Democrats in Congress, Nancy Pelosi.
This prospect worries even within the Republican camp. “Asking for a pardon for these people would be a bad thing,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a close friend of Mr. Trump, told Fox New Sunday.
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