12 Honored With Presidential Citizens Medals By Biden on Two-Year Anniversary of Capitol Hill Riots

January 6, 2023 Pharaoh

Today, Jan. 6, marks the second anniversary of the 2021 Capitol insurrection, when supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the monument in an attempt to block the certification of the 2020 election.

For President Joe Biden, today is a new day to honor the individuals who made behaved extraordinarily when faced with mayhem, as well as officers who lost their lives or were injured as a result of the attack.

The White House announced that during an East Room ceremony Biden would bestow the Presidential Citizens Medal to 12 individuals, who one White House official said, “made exemplary contributions to our democracy surrounding January 6, 2021″ and demonstrated “courage and selflessness,” according to CNN.

The Presidential Citizens Medal, first established by executive order in 1969 by President Richard Nixon, is one of the country’s highest civilian honors, recognizing American citizens for over 50 years.

Among the recipients at today’s ceremony are seven police officers, including a posthumous medal to Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who suffered strokes and passed away the day after he responded to the attack, and an award to Officer Eugene Goodman, who was credited with directing rioters away from the entrance of the Senate floor while lawmakers evacuated the building.

Included in the twelve are Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges, and former officer Michael Fanone, AP News reported.

Others honorees include election workers who were threatened to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, two Black women election workers in Fulton County, GA, recalled how that traumatic day triggered racist threats and public defamation by Trump and his supporters.

WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 21: Wandrea ArShaye “Shaye” Moss, former Georgia election worker, becomes emotional while testifying as her mother Ruby Freeman watches during the fourth hearing held by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol on June 21, 2022 in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, DC. The bipartisan committee, which has been gathering evidence related to the January 6, 2021 attack at the U.S. Capitol for almost a year, is presenting its findings in a series of televised hearings. On January 6, 2021, supporters of President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol Building in an attempt to disrupt a congressional vote to confirm the electoral college win for Joe Biden. (Photo by Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images)

“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?” Freeman told the House panel, per CNN.

Biden is also recognizing Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, and former Arizona House speaker, Rusty Bowers, who resisted pressure from Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to overturn results.

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