President Joe Biden awarded former Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney a Presidential Citizens Medal, the second-highest U.S. civilian honor, on Thursday, Jan. 2. The accolade recognizes her work co-chairing the House Select Committee on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
Cheney received the award in a ceremony where her co-chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., also received the honor, as did 18 others.
It comes less than three weeks before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Download the SAN app today to stay up-to-date with Unbiased. Straight Facts™.
Point phone camera here
Before his election win, Trump faced federal charges alleging he incited the deadly 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. However, the Justice Department later dropped the charges.
In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press last month, Trump said both Cheney and Thompson should be in jail. He accused them of deleting all evidence in their investigation.
“I think those people committed a major crime and [Liz] Cheney was behind it, and so was Bennie Thompson and everybody on that committee,” Trump said.
In 2023, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., criticized the Jan. 6 committee. He alleged in a Fox News interview that they did not adequately preserve some documents relating to Capitol security failures.
Committee members deny deleting records, many of which are publicly available as transcripts or videos.
Four former U.S. senators –– Democrats Bill Bradley, Chris Dodd and Ted Kaufman, as well as Republican Nancy Landon Kassebaum –– also received the Presidential Citizens Medal.
Other recipients in Thursday’s ceremony include:
- Early LGBTQ rights advocates Evan Wolfson and Mary Bonauto.
- Mitsuye Endo, the plaintiff who died in 2006 but led the case overturning the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.
- Frank K. Butler Jr., a Navy SEAL whose improvements to medical guidelines for treating injured troops likely saved thousands of lives of U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
