Former President Donald Trump headed to Capitol Hill on Thursday for a meeting with Republican elected officials — and outside the Capitol Hill Club, where the gathering was taking place, protesters showed up.

One individual held a sign reading “FAILED COUP” in reference, it would seem, to a combination of things: Republicans in Congress who tried after the last presidential election to undercut its outcome including by voting against the certification of some of Joe Biden’s electoral votes and the actual violent attack on the Capitol in January 2021. The violence was perpetrated by Trump supporters in the wake of extensive misrepresentations about what actually took place in the 2020 election, and Trump has been widely accused of bearing responsibility for the onslaught.

Another sign cut to the core of some of the recent legal proceedings ensnaring Trump. “Plotting to overturn an election is not an “official act,” it’s a crime!” it said.

Trump is currently facing a federal criminal case in which he is accused of conspiring against the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, meaning Joe Biden’s win that year, but he is claiming to hold wide-ranging legal protections from even the possibility of criminal consequences for actions taken amid his official responsibilities in office, which is where he groups what he was doing after that election.

In reality, taking Trump’s evident ambitions to their end-point would have undone the collective impact of tens of millions of duly documented votes for president from around the United States. Trump, though, claims that he was advancing the interests of the American people by going after claimed systematic fraud that the evidence has already debunked.

The scene outside the Capitol Hill Club, where House Republicans plan to meet with former President Trump pic.twitter.com/QUNXbUdMA1

— Luke Broadwater☀️ (@lukebroadwater) June 13, 2024