Outgoing President Joe Biden has awarded the Presidential Residents Medal, the second-highest civilian honour in the US, to members of a congressional committee that investigated the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
A complete of 20 honourees had been recognised in a ceremony on the White Home on Thursday.
Amongst them had been an activist who campaigned to legalise same-sex marriage within the US, a navy physician who improved battlefield trauma care, and a civil rights chief who laid the groundwork for desegregation.
“ An important title in America shouldn’t be president however citizen. It’s ‘We the folks,’” Biden mentioned, quoting the preamble to the US Structure. “ These are the phrases of the rock upon which this whole nation has been constructed.”
However a few the previous legislators honoured had been explicitly praised for his or her work on a committee within the Home of Representatives charged with probing the January 6 assault.
One recipient was the committee chair, Democrat Bennie Thompson of Louisiana. The second was his vice chair, former Republican Consultant Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Prolonged applause welcomed Cheney to the stage on the White Home on Thursday, as an announcer praised her “for placing the American folks over celebration”. Thompson, in the meantime, was hailed for his “lifelong dedication to safeguarding our Structure”.
What’s January 6?
Cheney has develop into a political lightning rod since her years on the committee. She is a well-liked goal of criticism for President-elect Donald Trump, the de facto chief of the Republican Celebration.
The January 6 attack was spurred by Trump’s false claims that he had gained the 2020 presidential election.
On that day, Trump held a “Cease the Steal” rally outdoors of the White Home, repeating unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud.
Hundreds of his supporters then travelled a number of blocks west to the US Capitol, the place they attacked regulation enforcement and broke into the constructing whereas Congress was certifying the election outcomes.
Lawmakers had been evacuated, and rioters had been heard to chant threats like, “Hold Mike Pence,” a reference to the vice president who was overseeing the vote certification.
As of November 2024, the US Justice Division reported that 1,561 folks have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the riot. A complete of 645 had been sentenced to incarceration.
The company famous that firearms, tasers, knives, axes and pepper spray had been among the many weapons the rioters introduced into the Capitol throughout the January 6 assault.
Biden has previously awarded the Presidential Residents Medal to Capitol law enforcement officials and election employees who acquired threats within the wake of the 2020 vote, together with Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss.
“ I’ve been honoured to current regulation enforcement officers who defended our Capitol on January sixth and the state and native election officers, elected leaders, who defended the free and truthful election of 2020,” Biden mentioned at Thursday’s ceremony.
“Right now, we have a good time a brand new group of People who devoted their careers to serving our democracy in different important methods.”
Cheney versus Trump
Thursday’s medal ceremony happened simply days earlier than the riot’s fourth anniversary — and fewer than three weeks earlier than Trump himself is ready to take workplace for a second time period. He shall be sworn in on January 20.
Trump beforehand served from 2017 to 2021, at which period Biden, the winner of the 2020 race, succeeded him.
Within the months after the January 6 riot, the Home of Representatives voted to assemble an impartial investigative committee to look into the circumstances surrounding the assault.
The fee was finally dissolved in 2023 when the Home switched from Democratic to Republican management. However in its remaining weeks, the fee launched a damning, 850-page report recommending prison prices towards Trump.
It accused him of a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 election outcomes.
“The central reason behind January sixth was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others adopted,” the report mentioned. “Not one of the occasions of January 6 would have occurred with out him.”
Cheney was one among solely two Republicans on the committee. Each have since left workplace. Cheney misplaced her celebration main whereas her Republican colleague Adam Kinzinger didn’t search re-election in any respect.
She and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, have since develop into visible critics of Trump, even supporting his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, within the 2024 presidential race.
In an interview with NPR in December 2023, Cheney accused Trump of remodeling the Republican Celebration right into a “cult of persona” and referred to as him a risk to US democracy.
“He talks about weaponising the levers of our authorities towards his political opponents,” Cheney instructed the NPR programme, Contemporary Air. “I don’t view that a lot by the lens of what it could imply for me personally. However I believe that what it could imply for the republic is that we gained’t be a republic any extra.”
In the meantime, Trump has urged the members of the January 6 committee needs to be arrested, spurring fears of political retribution.
“Truthfully, they need to go to jail,” he instructed the NBC programme Meet the Press in December.
He repeatedly accused the committee, with out proof, of deleting or suppressing proof. “Cheney did one thing that’s inexcusable, together with Thompson and the folks on the un-select committee of political thugs and, , creeps.”
