Outgoing President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Citizen’s Medal, the nation’s second-highest civilian honor, to members of the congressional committee that investigated the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
A total of 20 honorees were recognized at a ceremony held Thursday at the White House.
Among them were activists who campaigned to legalize same-sex marriage in the United States, military doctors who improved the treatment of battlefield trauma, and civil rights activists who laid the groundwork for the end of racial discrimination.
“The most important title in America is not president, but citizen. “We the people,” Biden said, citing the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. “These are the words of the rock on which this whole kingdom was built.”
But the two former lawmakers honored were explicitly praised for their work on the House committee charged with investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
One of the recipients was committee chairman Bennie Thompson, a Louisiana Democrat. The second was his vice-chair, former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Cheney took the White House stage Thursday to loud applause, and one announcer praised her for “bringing the American people to the party.” Meanwhile, Thompson was praised for his “lifelong dedication to defending the Constitution.”
What day is January 6th?
Cheney has become a political lightning rod since she served on the committee. She is a popular target of criticism of President-elect Donald Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican Party.
The January 6 attack was sparked by Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 presidential election.
On this day, President Trump held a ‘Stop the Steal’ rally outside the White House and repeatedly asserted baseless allegations of voter fraud.
Thousands of his supporters moved to the U.S. Capitol a few blocks west, attacking law enforcement and breaking into the building while Congress was certifying the election results.
Lawmakers were evacuated and rioters could be heard chanting threats such as “Hold Mike Pence,” a reference to the vice president who was overseeing the vote certification.
As of November 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice reported that 1,561 people have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the riot. A total of 645 people were sentenced to prison.
The agency noted that among the weapons rioters brought to the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack were firearms, Tasers, knives, axes and pepper spray.
Biden previously awarded the Presidential Citizen’s Medal to Capitol Police officers and election workers who received threats after the 2020 vote, including Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss.
“I am honored to join the law enforcement officers who defended our Capitol on January 6th, and the state and local election officials and elected leaders who defended free and fair elections in 2020,” Biden said at Thursday’s ceremony. .
“Today we celebrate a new group of Americans who have dedicated their careers to serving democracy in other vital ways.”
Cheney vs. Trump
Thursday’s medal ceremony took place just days before the fourth anniversary of the riots and less than three weeks before Trump himself begins his second term. He is scheduled to take office on January 20.
Trump previously served from 2017 to 2021, when he was succeeded by Biden, the winner of the 2020 primary.
Months after the Jan. 6 riot, the House of Representatives voted to create an independent investigative commission to investigate the circumstances surrounding the attack.
The committee was ultimately disbanded in 2023 when the House switched from Democratic to Republican leadership. But in its final weeks, the committee released a damning 850-page report recommending criminal charges against Trump.
They accused him of a “multi-pronged conspiracy” to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“The primary cause of January 6 was one person, former President Donald Trump, and many others followed him,” the report said. “None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.”
Cheney was one of only two Republicans on the committee. Both men subsequently left the office. Cheney lost the party’s primary, and fellow Republican Adam Kinzinger did not seek re-election at all.
She and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, have since become prominent critics of Trump, even endorsing his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, in the 2024 presidential election.
In a December 2023 interview with NPR, Cheney accused Trump of turning the Republican Party into a “cult of personality” and called him a threat to American democracy.
“He talks about weaponizing the tools of our government against political opponents,” Cheney told the NPR program Fresh Air. “I don’t look at it so much through the lens of what it means to me personally. But I think what that means for the republic is that we will no longer be a republic.”
Meanwhile, President Trump has suggested that committee members should be arrested on January 6, raising concerns about political retaliation.
“Frankly, they should go to jail,” he said on the NBC program Meet the Press in December.
He repeatedly accused the committee of deleting or concealing evidence without any evidence. “Cheney did something inexcusable with Thompson and a bunch of unelected political thugs and appalling committee people.”
