Pelosi says Biden win certification to resume ‘tonight’

By AFP 7 January 2021, 2:13 am

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US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., arrives as a joint session of the House and Senate convenes to count the Electoral College votes cast in November's election, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says lawmakers will resume counting electoral votes once the US Capitol is given an all clear, after the certification process was halted when Donald Trump supporters stormed the building.

“We have decided we should proceed tonight at the Capitol once it is cleared for use,” Pelosi says in a letter to colleagues, after reports that the building was secured by police and demonstrators were removed.

The senior lawmaker blasts the storming of the Capitol as a “shameful assault” on American democracy that was “anointed at the highest level of government, but says “it cannot, however, deter us from our responsibility to validate the election of Joe Biden.”