President Joe Biden is to award the leaders of the Congressional investigation into the Capitol riot, Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, with the second-highest civilian decoration, and Donald Trump is to award the second highest civilian decoration for their roles in the investigation. He argues that he should be imprisoned.
At a ceremony at the White House on Thursday, Biden was joined by former Sen. Ted Kaufman (D), an American who fought for marriage equality, a pioneer in the care of wounded soldiers and a longtime friend of the president. The President’s National Medal is scheduled to be awarded to 20 people, including Mr. Dell, Chris Dodd Democratic Party
“President Biden believes these Americans are bonded by common sense and a dedication to serving others,” the White House said in a statement. “The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.”
Mr. Biden last year was involved in defending the Capitol from an angry mob of Trump supporters on January 6, 2021, and in the United States during the 2020 presidential election, when President Trump unsuccessfully tried to overturn the results. He praised those who helped protect the will of voters. .
Cheney, a former Wyoming congressman, and Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, led the House committee investigating the riot. The commission’s final report found that Trump was criminally involved in “multiple conspiracies” to overturn the legitimate election results he lost to Biden and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol. insisted. Trump “started that fire,” Thompson wrote.
Cheney, who lost her seat in the Republican primary in August, later angered Trump by saying she would vote for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election and campaign with the Democratic candidate. . Mr. Biden has been considering whether to grant preemptive pardons to Mr. Cheney and others targeted by Mr. Trump.
President Trump, who won the 2024 election and will be inaugurated on January 20, still refuses to recant his lies about the 2020 presidential election and says he will pardon the rioters when he returns to the White House.
The president-elect said, “Cheney, along with Thompson and the rest of the people on the Unelected Committee of Political Thugs, did unforgivable things and, you know, creepy things.”The testimony they collected He claimed, without evidence, that it had been “deleted and destroyed.”
“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he said.
President Trump’s communications director, Stephen Chan, said Cheney and Thompson were “an embarrassment to this country” for their conduct on the committee.
Biden also presented the award to Mary Bonauto, a lawyer who fought to legalize same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, a leader in the marriage equality movement.
Other honorees include Frank Butler, who set new standards for the use of tourniquets for war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans served as a military nurse during the Vietnam War and founded 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 also presented awards to photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Valerie and Paula Wallace, and National Breast Cancer Federation President Frances Visco.
Other former members of Congress honored include former U.S. Sens. Bill Bradley, D-N.J., and Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to serve in the Kansas House of Representatives. Former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D.N.Y.) defended gun safety measures after her son and husband were shot and killed.
Biden plans to pay tribute to the four men after their deaths. Joseph Galloway is a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in his book “Once a Soldier…And a Young Man.” civil rights activist and lawyer Louis Lorenzo Redding; Former Delaware County Judge Collins Seitz. and Mitsue Endo Tsutsumi, who was detained along with other Japanese Americans during World War II and protested her detention.
The Presidential Civilian Medal was created by President Richard Nixon in 1969 and is the nation’s second highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It recognizes people who have “performed exemplary acts of service to their country and fellow citizens.”
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