Outgoing President Joe Biden has awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second-highest civilian honor in the United States, to members of a congressional committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
A total of 20 honorees were recognized at a ceremony at the White House on Thursday.
Among them were an activist who campaigned for the legalization of same-sex marriage in the US, a military doctor who improved battlefield trauma care and a civil rights leader who laid the groundwork for desegregation.
“The most important title in America is not president, but citizen. It’s “we the people,” Biden said, citing the preamble to the US Constitution. “These are the words of the rock upon which this whole nation is built.”
But some of the esteemed former lawmakers were explicitly praised for their work on a House committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
One recipient was committee chairman Democrat Bennie Thompson of Louisiana. The second was his running mate, former Republican representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
A standing ovation greeted Cheney on the White House stage Thursday, as an announcer praised him for “putting the American people above party.” Thompson, meanwhile, was hailed for his “lifelong dedication to defending our Constitution.”
What is January 6th?
Cheney has become a political lightning rod since her years on the committee. She is a popular target of criticism for President-elect Donald Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican Party.
The January 6 attack was prompted by Trump’s false claims that he had won the 2020 presidential election.
That day, Trump held a “Stop the Steal” rally outside the White House, repeating baseless allegations of voter fraud.
Thousands of his supporters then traveled several blocks west to the US Capitol, where they attacked law enforcement and entered the building as Congress was certifying the election results.
Lawmakers were evacuated and protesters were heard shouting threats such as, “Hang Mike Pence,” a reference to the vice president overseeing the certification of votes.
As of November 2024, the US Department of Justice reported that 1,561 people have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the riots. A total of 645 were sentenced to imprisonment.
The agency noted that firearms, tasers, knives, axes and pepper spray were among the weapons rioters brought to the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack.
Biden has previously awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to Capitol Police officers and election workers who received threats in the wake of the 2020 vote, including Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss.
“I had the honor of introducing the law enforcement officers who protected our Capitol on Jan. 6 and the state and local election officials, elected leaders, who protected the free and fair 2020 election,” Biden said at Thursday’s ceremony. .
“Today, we celebrate a new group of Americans who dedicated their careers to serving our democracy in other essential 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 is slated to take office for a second term. He will be sworn in on January 20.
Trump previously served from 2017 to 2021, at which time Biden, the winner of the 2020 race, succeeded him.
In the months following the January 6 riots, the House of Representatives voted to convene an independent investigative committee to look into the circumstances of the attack.
The commission was finally disbanded in 2023 when the House of Representatives switched from Democratic to Republican leadership. But in its final weeks, the commission released an 850-page report recommending criminal charges against Trump.
He accused him of a “multi-part plot” to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“The central trigger of January 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” 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 have since left office. Cheney lost the party primary while her fellow Republican Adam Kinzinger did not seek re-election at all.
She and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, have since become outspoken critics of Trump, even endorsing his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, in the 2024 presidential race.
In an interview with NPR in December 2023, Cheney accused Trump of transforming the Republican Party into a “personality cult” and called it a threat to American democracy.
“He talks about weaponizing the levers of our government against his political opponents,” Cheney told NPR’s Fresh Air program. “I don’t see it so much through the lens of what it meant to me personally. But I think what it would mean for the republic is that we will no longer be a republic.”
Meanwhile, Trump has suggested that members of the January 6 committee be arrested, fueling fears of political retribution.
“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press program in December.
He repeatedly accused the committee, without evidence, of deleting or suppressing evidence. “Cheney did something that is inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the unelected committee of political thugs and, you know, procrastination.”
