Outgoing President Joe Biden has awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second-highest civilian honour in the United States, to members of a congressional committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

A total of 20 honourees were recognised in a ceremony at the White House on Thursday.

Among them were an activist who campaigned to legalise same-sex marriage in the US, a military doctor who improved battlefield trauma care, and a civil rights leader who laid the groundwork for desegregation.

“ The most important title in America is not president but citizen. It is ‘We the people,’” Biden said, quoting the preamble to the US Constitution. “ These are the words of the rock upon which this entire nation has been built.”

But a couple of the former legislators honoured were explicitly praised for their work on a committee in the House of Representatives charged with probing the January 6 attack.

One recipient was the committee chair, Democrat Bennie Thompson of Louisiana. The second was his vice chair, former Republican Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

Extended applause welcomed Cheney to the stage at the White House on Thursday, as an announcer praised her “for putting the American people over party”. Thompson, meanwhile, was hailed for his “lifelong dedication to safeguarding our Constitution”.

What is January 6?

Cheney has become a political lightning rod since her years on the committee. She is a popular target of criticism for President-elect Donald Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican Party.

The January 6 attack was spurred by Trump’s false claims that he had won the 2020 presidential election.

On that day, Trump held a “Stop the Steal” rally outside of the White House, repeating unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud.

Thousands of his supporters then travelled several blocks west to the US Capitol, where they attacked law enforcement and broke into the building while Congress was certifying the election results.

Lawmakers were evacuated, and rioters were heard to chant threats like, “Hang Mike Pence,” a reference to the vice president who was overseeing the vote certification.

As of November 2024, the US Justice Department reported that 1,561 people have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the riot. A total of 645 were sentenced to incarceration.

The agency noted that firearms, tasers, knives, axes and pepper spray were among the weapons the rioters brought into the Capitol during the January 6 attack.

Biden has previously awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to Capitol police officers and election workers who received threats in the wake of the 2020 vote, including Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss.

“ I’ve been honoured to present law enforcement officers who defended our Capitol on January 6th and the state and local election officials, elected leaders, who defended the free and fair election of 2020,” Biden said at Thursday’s ceremony.

“Today, we celebrate a new group of Americans who dedicated their careers to serving our democracy in other essential ways.”

Cheney versus Trump

Thursday’s medal ceremony took place just days before the riot’s fourth anniversary — and less than three weeks before Trump himself is set to take office for a second term. He will be sworn in on January 20.

Trump previously served from 2017 to 2021, at which time Biden, the winner of the 2020 race, succeeded him.

In the months after the January 6 riot, the House of Representatives voted to assemble an independent investigative committee to look into the circumstances surrounding the attack.

The commission was ultimately dissolved in 2023 when the House switched from Democratic to Republican leadership. But in its final weeks, the commission released a damning, 850-page report recommending criminal charges against Trump.

It accused him of a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 election results.

“The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, whom many others followed,” the report said. “None of the events of January 6 would have happened without him.”

Cheney was one of only two Republicans on the committee. Both have since left office. Cheney lost her party primary while her Republican colleague Adam Kinzinger did not seek re-election at all.

She and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, have since become visible critics of Trump, even supporting his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, in the 2024 presidential race.

In an interview with NPR in December 2023, Cheney accused Trump of transforming the Republican Party into a “cult of personality” and called him a threat to US democracy.

“He talks about weaponising the levers of our government against his political opponents,” Cheney told the NPR programme, Fresh Air. “I don’t view that so much through the lens of what it would mean for me personally. But I think that what it would mean for the republic is that we won’t be a republic any more.”

Meanwhile, Trump has suggested the members of the January 6 committee should be arrested, spurring fears of political retribution.

“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he told the NBC programme Meet the Press in December.

He repeatedly accused the committee, without proof, of deleting or suppressing evidence. “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps.”