President Joe Biden awarded the second highest civilian medal to Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson on Thursday, (*6*)leaders of the congressional investigation Capitol rioter, who Donald Trump says should be sentenced to prison for his role in the investigation.
Biden admitted Presidential Citizens Medal Down 20 people at a ceremony in the East Room attended by Americans fighting for marriage equality, a pioneer in treating wounded soldiers and two longtime friends of the president, made sense. Ted Kaufman of the State of Delaware and Chris Dodd of the State of Connecticut.
» READ MORE: Fran Visco, who is battling breast cancer in Philadelphia, is among those honored with the Presidential Citizens’ Medal
“Together you embody a central truth: We are a great nation because we are good people,” he said. “Our democracy begins and ends with civic duties. This has been our work for centuries and this is what you all embody.”
Last year, Biden honored those who were involved defending the Capitol from a mob of enraged Trump supporters on January 6, 2021, or who helped protect the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election when Trump unsuccessfully tried to overturn the results.
Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, and Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, led the House committee that investigated the insurrection. Committee final report he asserted that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the election he lost to Biden and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol. Thompson wrote that Trump “lit this fire.”
When Cheney took the stage, the audience erupted in deafening cheers and stood up. Biden shook her hand and presented her with a medal. The announcer said she got it “for making Americans have fun.”
Cheney, who lost her seat in Primary GOP in August 2022, she later said she would vote in favor Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race and campaigned with the Democratic nominee, drawing Trump’s ire. Biden was considering whether to make an offer preemptive pardons for Cheney and others to whom Trump has drawn attention.
Thompson, who also received a standing ovation, was recognized “for his lifetime commitment to protecting our Constitution.”
Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take office on Jan. 20, continues to stand by his lies about the 2020 presidential election and has said he will pardon the rioters when he returns to the White House.
During a job interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The president-elect said that “Cheney did something inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the committee of unelected political thugs and, you know, morons,” claiming that they “removed and destroyed” the testimony they collected without evidence.
“Frankly, they should go to jail,” he said.
Cheney and Thompson have brought “shame on this country” for their conduct on the committee, Trump communications director Steven Cheung said.
Biden also awarded the medal to lawyer Mary Bonauto, who fought to legalize same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, a leader of the marriage equality movement.
Other honorees included Frank Butler, who set up-to-date standards for the exploit of tourniquets for war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans, military nurse during the Vietnam War, founder of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation; and Eleanor Smeal, an activist who led women’s rights protests and fought for equal pay in the 1970s.
He honored photographer Bobby Sager, scientists Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
Other former lawmakers honored included former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.; former senator Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Republican Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who advocated for gun safety measures after the shootings of her son and husband.
After the awards were presented, he returned to the podium and asked the lawmakers in the room to stand, as well as John Kerry, a former U.S. senator and Biden’s first climate envoy.
“Let us remember that our work continues,” he told the room after thanking the families present for the support they gave to the nominees. “We have a lot more work to do to keep this going.”
Biden posthumously honored four people: Joseph Galloway, a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in the book “We Were Soldiers Once… and Young”; civil rights activist and lawyer Louis Lorenzo Redding; former Delaware State Judge Collins Seitz; and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was detained with other Japanese Americans during World War II and contested the detention.
The Presidential Citizenship Medal was established by President Richard Nixon in 1969 and is the nation’s second-highest civilian award after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It recognizes people who have “performed exemplary acts in service to their country or fellow citizens.”
