President Joe Biden will award the Presidential Citizens Medal to Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police officers who defended the US Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection in a White House ceremony to be held Friday.
(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden will award the Presidential Citizens Medal to Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police officers who defended the US Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection in a White House ceremony to be held Friday.
Biden will deliver an address to mark the two-year anniversary of the attack and recognize 12 individuals who protected democracy, according to the White House.
Among those who will be honored are Michael Fanone, a Metropolitan Police officer who was injured in the attack and resigned from the force, Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer who is credited with diverting rioters from the Senate floor.
Brian Sicknick, also from Capitol Police, who confronted the attackers and later died after suffering a stroke, will be awared the medal posthumously.
It will be the first time Biden has awarded the Citizens Medal. Other honorees include election workers and state and local officials, who faced pressure over the 2020 vote counts in their states.
Biden will give medals to former Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Rusty Bowers, who was Arizona House speaker in 2020, and Shaye Moss, who was an election worker in Fulton County, Georgia.
In 2022, Biden marked the Jan. 6 anniversary with an address blaming former President Donald Trump directly for the violence at the Capitol. The House committee investigating the attack delivered its report last month, also laying the blame on “one man” — Trump — and with the first-ever congressional criminal referral against a former president.
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