WASHINGTON (AP) — High Home and Senate leaders will current regulation enforcement officers who defended the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 with Congressional Gold Medals on Tuesday, awarding them Congress’s highest honor practically two years after they fought with former President Donald Trump’s supporters in a brutal and bloody assault.
To acknowledge the a whole bunch of officers who had been on the Capitol on Jan. 6, the medals can be positioned in 4 places — at U.S. Capitol Police headquarters, the Metropolitan Police Division, the Capitol and the Smithsonian Establishment. President Joe Biden stated when he signed the laws final yr {that a} medal can be positioned on the Smithsonian museum “so all guests can perceive what occurred that day.”
The ceremony within the Capitol Rotunda comes as Democrats, simply weeks away from shedding their Home majority, race to complete an almost 18-month investigation of the revolt. Democrats and two Republicans conducting the probe have vowed to uncover the main points of the assault, which got here as Trump tried to overturn his election defeat and inspired his supporters to “battle like hell” in a rally simply earlier than the congressional certification.
Awarding the medals can be amongst Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s final ceremonial acts as she prepares to step down from management. When the invoice handed the Home greater than a yr in the past, she stated the regulation enforcement officers from throughout the town defended the Capitol as a result of they had been “the kind of Individuals who heard the decision to serve and answered it, placing nation above self.”
“They enabled us to return to the Capitol,” and certify Biden’s presidency, she stated then, “to that podium that evening to indicate the world that our democracy had prevailed and that it had succeeded due to them.”
Dozens of the officers who fought off the rioters sustained critical accidents. Because the mob of Trump’s supporters pushed previous them and into the Capitol, police had been crushed with American flags and their very own weapons, dragged down stairs, sprayed with chemical compounds and trampled and crushed by the group. Officers suffered bodily wounds, together with mind accidents and different lifelong results, and lots of struggled to work afterward as a result of they had been so traumatized.
4 officers who testified at a Home listening to final yr spoke overtly in regards to the lasting psychological and bodily scars, and a few detailed near-death experiences.
Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges described foaming on the mouth, bleeding and screaming because the rioters tried to gouge out his eye and crush him between two heavy doorways. Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who rushed to the scene, stated he was “grabbed, crushed, tased, all whereas being referred to as a traitor to my nation.” Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn stated a big group of individuals shouted the N-word at him as he was making an attempt to maintain them from breaching the Home chamber.
At the least 9 individuals who had been on the Capitol that day died throughout and after the rioting, together with a lady who was shot and killed by police as she tried to interrupt into the Home chamber and three different Trump supporters who suffered medical emergencies. Two cops died by suicide within the days that instantly adopted, and a 3rd officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and later died after one of many rioters sprayed him with a chemical. A medical expert decided he died of pure causes.
A number of months after the assault, in August 2021, the Metropolitan Police introduced that two extra of their officers who had responded to the revolt had died by suicide. The circumstances that led to their deaths had been unknown.
The June 2021 Home vote to award the medals received widespread help from each events. However 21 Home Republicans voted towards it — lawmakers who had downplayed the violence and stayed loyal to Trump. The Senate handed the laws by voice vote, with no Republican objections.
Pelosi, Home Republican Chief Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer and Senate Republican Chief Mitch McConnell will attend the ceremony and award the medals. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger and Metropolitan Police Division Chief Robert Contee are additionally anticipated to attend.
The Congressional Gold Medal, the very best honor Congress can bestow, has been handed out by the legislative department since 1776. Earlier recipients embrace George Washington, Sir Winston Churchill, Bob Hope and Robert Frost. In recent times, Congress has awarded the medals to former New Orleans Saints participant Steve Gleason, who turned a number one advocate for folks battling Lou Gehrig’s illness, and biker Greg LeMond.
Signing the invoice on the White Home final yr, Biden stated the officers’ heroism can’t be forgotten.
The revolt was a “violent try and overturn the desire of the American folks,” and Individuals have to know what occurred, he stated. “The trustworthy and unvarnished fact. We now have to face it.”