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    Biden Marks 2nd Anniversary of Jan. 6 By Awarding 14 Presidential Medals

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    President Biden marked the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack by awarding the Presidential Citizens Medal to 14 people.Fourteen people who fought the violent mob at the Capitol two years ago and stood against election denialism in 2020 were awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesWASHINGTON — President Biden on Friday honored 14 people who stood against election denialism in 2020 and fought the violent mob at the Capitol two years ago, telling them in a White House ceremony that history “will remember your names, remember your courage, remember your bravery.”Speaking from the East Room, he awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to nine police officers — three of whom died after protecting the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — and five local officials who were subjected to personal violence but resisted pressure to undermine the election in 2020.Together, Mr. Biden said, the individuals he honored represented the “extraordinary Americans” whose service to the country helped thwart the efforts of former President Donald J. Trump and his allies as they sought to keep Mr. Trump in power.“A violent mob of insurrectionists assaulted law enforcement, vandalized sacred halls, hunted down elected officials, all for the purpose of attempting to overthrow the will of the people and usurp the peaceful transfer of power,” Mr. Biden said. “All of it — all of it — was fueled by lies about the 2020 election. But on this day, two years ago, our democracy held because we the people, as the Constitution refers to us, we the people did not flinch.”A year ago, on the first anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, Mr. Biden rejected the idea that Americans are “too bogged down by division to succeed,” though he added a grim, cautionary note: “Believe me, I know how difficult democracy is.”On Friday, as the president marked the second anniversary, those divisions were on full display in Washington.Twenty Republican lawmakers, most of them eager participants in the election lies that gave rise to the Jan. 6 attack, have repeatedly failed this week to elect a speaker, bringing the proceedings of democracy to a halt in the House.Understand the Events on Jan. 6Timeline: On Jan. 6, 2021, 64 days after Election Day 2020, a mob of supporters of President Donald J. Trump raided the Capitol. Here is a close look at how the attack unfolded.A Day of Rage: Using thousands of videos and police radio communications, a Times investigation reconstructed in detail what happened — and why.Lost Lives: A bipartisan Senate report found that at least seven people died in connection with the attack.Jan. 6 Attendees: To many of those who attended the Trump rally but never breached the Capitol, that date wasn’t a dark day for the nation. It was a new start.Democracy, it seems, is as difficult as Mr. Biden predicted a year ago.Mr. Biden’s first speech about Jan. 6 was also more focused on Mr. Trump and his actions. Speaking from Statuary Hall in the Capitol in 2022, the president issued a scathing takedown of his predecessor and vowed to “stand in this breach” to ensure that no one places “a dagger at the throat of our democracy.”This time, Mr. Biden sought to draw attention not to Mr. Trump, but to the people who stood against the former president.He began by honoring nine police officers, all of whom fought against the surge of violence on Jan. 6 as lawmakers met to certify Mr. Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump.He praised Daniel Hodges, a Washington police officer who was injured during his first visit to the Capitol, for his bravery amid the chaos.“Sprayed with poison, pinned and crushed, eye almost gouged out — he didn’t break,” Mr. Biden said of Mr. Hodges.Mr. Biden honored Michael Fanone, a Capitol Police officer who he said was “beaten, beaten, not pushed around, beaten” and yet “defended our democracy with absolute courage.” And Mr. Biden also paid tribute to Caroline Edwards, the first law enforcement officer injured by the rioters, saying she was knocked unconscious by rioters but “got back up to help hold the line.”Mr. Biden also awarded the medal to Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer who faced racial slurs and harassment on Jan. 6; Aquilino Gonell, a sergeant with the Capitol Police who was injured in the attack; and Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer who led a pro-Trump mob away from the entrance to the Senate chamber.Three officers Mr. Biden honored on Friday died after the Jan. 6 attacks: Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who died of a stroke a day after the attacks; Howard C. Liebengood, who died by suicide three days after the attack; and Jeffrey L. Smith, a Metropolitan Police officer who also died by suicide after helping to protect the Capitol.Speaking to the family members of the honorees, who accepted the medals on the men’s behalf, Mr. Biden offered condolences and a sense of understanding about the grief they are still struggling to deal with.“Boy is it hard,” he said. “I know how proud I am when my son Beau is honored on the anniversary of his death as a consequence of burn pits in Iraq. But it brings everything back like it happened that moment.“I want to thank you for having the courage to be here today,” he added.In addition to the police officers, Mr. Biden awarded the medals to five local officials, each of whom refused to do the bidding of those who insisted that the election had been rigged.Two of them — Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, who is her daughter — received the awards for serving as poll workers in Atlanta, where they were subjected to abuse by Trump supporters who falsely accused them of participating in election fraud.“Both of them were just doing their jobs, and they were targeted and threatened by the same peddlers of a lie that was fueling the insurrection,” Mr. Biden said. “They were literally forced from their homes and faced despicable racist taunts.”Mr. Biden also praised Al Schmidt, who was a city commissioner on the Philadelphia County Board of Elections in 2020, noting that he “did not bend, he did not bow, he did not yield to the political threats and pressure.” And he hailed Jocelyn Benson, who served as the Secretary of State of Michigan during the 2020 election, and Rusty Bowers, the Republican House speaker in Arizona. All three resisted pressure from those seeking to overturn the results in 2020.Mr. Biden called Ms. Benson “a true leader in our nation” and said Mr. Bowers shows people “what integrity is all about.”A year ago, with the events of Jan. 6 looming in the more recent past, Mr. Biden expressed greater worry about the future of the country, saying that “as we stand here today — one year since Jan. 6, 2021 — the lies that drove the anger and madness we saw in this place, they have not abated.”But on Friday, he returned to the optimism that has often characterized his speeches.“We’re not a land of kings and dictators, autocrats and extremists,” he said. “As we see in today’s honorees, we’re a nation and we the people that toughen our fiber, renew our faith and strengthen our cause. There’s nothing beyond our capacity, if we act together.” More

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      Biden Will Mark Jan. 6 With Presidential Medals for Election Officials

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      The Presidential Citizens Medal will honor those who resisted efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including law enforcement officers and Rusty Bowers, the former House speaker in Arizona.WASHINGTON — President Biden on Friday will mark the second anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by awarding the Presidential Citizens Medal to a dozen people who resisted efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.Mr. Biden will present the award, which is among the nation’s highest civilian honors, at a ceremony at the White House, officials said. The award is given to people who have “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”The group to be honored is a who’s who of figures that defended the 2020 election results in the face of threats from Donald J. Trump and his most fervent supporters.It includes leading Republicans, like Rusty Bowers, the former Arizona House speaker, and Al Schmidt, a city commissioner in Pennsylvania, who helped confirm Mr. Trump’s defeat in their states by insisting all absentee ballots be counted. Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic secretary of state in Michigan, oversaw an extended process to tabulate votes in Detroit.Mr. Biden will also honor Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, who processed ballots during the 2020 election for the Fulton County, Ga., elections board. They were falsely accused of manipulating ballots by Mr. Trump, his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and the conspiracy website The Gateway Pundit.The two women later sued The Gateway Pundit and Mr. Giuliani, and Ms. Freeman, like several of the other honorees, testified before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.The president will also honor seven police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, including Brian Sicknick, who died of a stroke a day later.The ceremony comes two years after the attacks by Trump supporters, who violently forced their way into the Capitol with the intent to stop lawmakers from formally certifying Mr. Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump.Since then, Mr. Biden has repeatedly warned that the day’s events — and the broader effort by Mr. Trump and his allies to undermine confidence in the election — represent a significant threat to American democracy.“For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol,” Mr. Biden said during a speech on the first anniversary of the attacks.In those remarks, Mr. Biden vowed to work against the forces who enabled the attack on that dark day in American history.“I will stand in this breach,” he said, speaking from the Capitol. “I will defend this nation. And I will allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of our democracy.”This year, Mr. Biden’s speech will focus on the people who attempted to defend democracy.Other awardees include:Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer who faced racial slurs and harassment on Jan. 6.Caroline Edwards, the first law enforcement officer injured by the rioters.Michael Fanone, a Washington police officer who was injured in the attack.Aquilino Gonell, a sergeant with the Capitol Police who was injured in the attack.Eugene Goodman, a Capitol Police officer who led a pro-Trump mob away from the entrance to the Senate chamber during the attack.Daniel Hodges, a Washington police officer who was injured in the attack. According to the White House, Jan. 6 was his first time in the Capitol. More

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      Josh Shapiro to Nominate Al Schmidt as Pennsylvania’s Elections Chief

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      Josh Shapiro, who will take office as governor this month, says he will nominate Al Schmidt, a longtime Republican official from Philadelphia, to be secretary of the commonwealth.Pennsylvania’s incoming Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, will nominate a Philadelphia Republican who resisted Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results to serve as the state’s chief election official, Mr. Shapiro said Thursday.For Mr. Shapiro, who will be sworn into office on Jan. 17, his choice for secretary of the commonwealth represents both an olive branch to moderate Republicans and a public affirmation of belief in the state’s election systems. Al Schmidt, Mr. Shapiro’s pick for the job, is a former Philadelphia city commissioner and longtime political figure.“Al Schmidt has a proven track record of defending our democracy, protecting voting rights and standing up to extremism — even in the face of grave threats,” Mr. Shapiro said in a statement released by his office. “I know he is ready to continue the hard work of preserving and strengthening our democracy.”For a decade, Mr. Schmidt, 51, held the Republican-designated seat on Philadelphia’s three-member city commission, which oversees municipal elections. He also served as executive director of the Philadelphia G.O.P. and as a senior adviser to the Republican Party of Pennsylvania.Still, Mr. Schmidt was relatively unknown outside Philadelphia until Mr. Trump, after the 2020 election, applied public pressure on him to stop counting absentee ballots. In 2021, Mr. Schmidt testified to the Senate that Mr. Trump’s comments had led to death threats that he said were intended to “intimidate and coerce us into not counting every valid vote.”“After the president tweeted about me, my wife and I received threats that named our children, included my home address and images of my home, and threated to put their ‘heads on spikes,’” Mr. Schmidt said. “What was once a fairly obscure administrative job is now one where lunatics are threatening to murder your children.”Last summer, Mr. Schmidt appeared before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and revealed written threats received by members of his family from Mr. Trump’s supporters, including one that read “Heads on spikes. Treasonous Schmidts.”Mr. Schmidt said in the statement released by Mr. Shapiro’s office that he would work to ensure that elections “remain free and fair here in Pennsylvania, and that we do more to ensure every eligible voter can make their voice heard.”Mr. Schmidt, whose nomination will need to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled State Senate, is the first cabinet appointment announced by Mr. Shapiro since November, when he defeated Doug Mastriano, a Republican and prominent election denier. Mr. Mastriano, a retired Army colonel, chartered buses to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, rally that led to the attack on the Capitol; he campaigned on a platform of restricting ballot access in Pennsylvania.In an interview last month, Mr. Shapiro said he hoped that Republicans in the Pennsylvania legislature would agree to change the state’s law that forbids the processing of absentee ballots and early votes before Election Day. The ballot procedures, which can drag out the counting, helped fuel the Trump-inspired threats against Mr. Schmidt.He also described the role for which he eventually nominated Mr. Schmidt.“I’m going to appoint a pro-democracy secretary of state,” he said in the interview. “We will respect the will of the people, certify the winners, whether we agree with the pick or not. That’s going to be my charge to my secretary of state.” More

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      Jan. 6 Panel Tracks How Trump Created and Spread Election Lies

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      In its second hearing this month, the committee showed how the former president ignored aides and advisers in declaring victory prematurely and relentlessly pressing claims of fraud he was told were wrong.WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol made a wide-ranging case on Monday that former President Donald J. Trump created and relentlessly spread the lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him in the face of mounting evidence from an expanding chorus of advisers that he had been legitimately defeated.The committee, in its second hearing this month, traced the origins and progression of what it has described as Mr. Trump’s “big lie.” It showed through live witness testimony and recorded depositions how the former president, defying many of his advisers, insisted on declaring victory on election night before the votes were fully counted, then sought to challenge his defeat with increasingly outlandish and baseless claims that he was repeatedly informed were wrong.“He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview the panel played on Monday, in which he at one point could not control his laughter at the absurdity of the claims that the former president was making.“There was never an indication of interest in what the actual facts were,” Mr. Barr said.The panel also used the testimony of Bill Stepien, Mr. Trump’s campaign chief, who told its investigators that Mr. Trump had ignored his election-night warning to refrain from declaring a victory that he had no basis for claiming. Instead, the president took the advice of Rudolph W. Giuliani — his personal lawyer who was, according to Jason Miller, a top campaign aide, “definitely intoxicated” — and said he had won even as the votes were still being tabulated.It was all part of the committee’s bid to show how Mr. Trump’s dissembling about the election results led directly to the events of Jan. 6, when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in the deadliest attack on the building in centuries, spurred on by the president’s exhortations to “stop the steal.”Investigators went further on Monday, detailing how the Trump campaign and its Republican allies used claims of a rigged election that they knew were false to mislead small donors and raise as much as $250 million for an entity they called the Official Election Defense Fund, which top campaign aides testified never existed.“Not only was there the big lie,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who played a key role in the hearing, “there was the big rip-off.”Money ostensibly raised to “stop the steal” instead went to Mr. Trump and his allies, including, the investigation found, $1 million for a charitable foundation run by Mark Meadows, his chief of staff; $1 million to a political group run by several of his former staff members, including Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda; more than $200,000 to Trump hotels; and $5 million to Event Strategies Inc., which ran the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the Capitol riot.Aides said Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., was paid $60,000 to speak at that event, a speech that lasted less than three minutes.“It is clear that he intentionally misled his donors, asked them to donate to a fund that didn’t exist and used the money raised for something other than what he said,” Ms. Lofgren said of Mr. Trump.Read More on the Jan. 6 House Committee HearingsMaking a Case Against Trump: The committee appears to be laying out a road map for prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump. But the path to any trial is uncertain.The Meaning of the Hearings: While the public sessions aren’t going to unite the country, they could significantly affect public opinion.An Unsettling Narrative: During the first hearing, the panel presented a gripping story with a sprawling cast of characters, but only three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.Trump’s Depiction: Mr. Trump was portrayed as a would-be autocrat willing to shred the Constitution to hang onto power. Liz Cheney: The vice chairwoman of the House committee has been unrepentant in continuing to blame Mr. Trump for stoking the attack on Jan. 6, 2021.But the bulk of the session was dedicated to showing how determined Mr. Trump was to cling to the fiction that he had won the election, only digging in more deeply as aide after aide informed him that he had not.Representatives Liz Cheney and Zoe Lofgren at the hearing.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesThe list of aides and advisers who sought to steer Mr. Trump away from his false claims was long and varied, according to the committee’s presentation. They included low-level campaign lawyers who outlined how they told the president that the returns coming in from the field showed that he was going to lose the race. Also among them were top officials in the Justice Department — including his onetime attorney general — who walked through how they had investigated claims that the race had been rigged or stolen and found them not only to be unsubstantiated, but to be nonsensical.“There were suggestions by, I believe it was Mayor Giuliani, to go and declare victory and say that we’d won it outright,” Mr. Miller said in a video interview played by the panel.Mr. Stepien later said he considered himself part of “Team Normal,” while a separate group of outside advisers including Mr. Giuliani were encouraging Mr. Trump’s false claims.The committee played several portions of a deposition by Mr. Barr, Mr. Trump’s last attorney general, who called the president’s claims of a stolen election “bullshit” and “bogus.”“I told them that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time,” Mr. Barr testified. “And it was a great, great disservice for the country.”Mr. Trump was still at it on Monday, issuing a rambling 12-page statement several hours after the committee hearing ended in which he doubled down on his claims of fraud, complaining — yet again without any evidence — that Democrats had inflated voter rolls, illegally harvested ballots, removed Republican poll watchers from vote-counting facilities, bribed election officials and stopped the counting on election night when he was still in the lead.“Democrats created the narrative of Jan. 6 to detract from the much larger and more important truth that the 2020 Election was rigged and stolen,” Mr. Trump wrote.Representative Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, said Mr. Trump waged an attack on democracy.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesIn the hearing room on Monday, the panel showed in striking detail how Mr. Trump’s advisers tried and failed to get him to drop his lies and accept defeat. In his deposition, Mr. Barr recalled several scenes inside the White House, including one in which he said he asked Mr. Meadows and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and top adviser, how long Mr. Trump intended “to go on with this stolen election stuff.”Mr. Barr recalled that Mr. Meadows had assured him that Mr. Trump was “becoming more realistic” and knew “how far he can take this.” As for Mr. Kushner, Mr. Barr recounted that he responded to the question by saying, “We’re working on this.”After informing Mr. Trump that his claims of fraud were false, Mr. Barr had a follow-up meeting with the president and his White House counsel, Pat Cipollone. Mr. Barr described in his deposition how Mr. Trump became enraged that his own attorney general had refused to back his fraud allegations.Chris Stirewalt, the first witness of the day, was on the Fox News team that called Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr.Doug Mills/The New York Times“This is killing me,” Mr. Barr quoted Mr. Trump as saying. “You must have said this because you hate Trump.”Altogether, Mr. Trump and his allies filed more than 60 lawsuits challenging the results of the election. But among the numerous claims of fraud, Mr. Barr told the committee, the worst — and most sensational — concerned a purported plot by Chinese software companies, Venezuelan officials and the liberal financier George Soros to hack into machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems and flip votes away from Mr. Trump.These allegations were most prominently pushed by a former federal prosecutor named Sidney Powell, who collected several unvetted affidavits from witnesses who supposedly had information about Dominion. In the weeks after the election, Ms. Powell, working with a group of other lawyers, filed four federal lawsuits laying out her claims in the Democratic strongholds of Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee and Phoenix even though the Trump campaign had already determined that some of her allegations were false.All of the suits — known as the “Krakens,” a reference to a mythical, havoc-wreaking sea beast — were eventually dismissed and deemed to be so frivolous that a federal judge sanctioned Ms. Powell and her colleagues. Dominion has sued her and others for defamation.Mr. Barr, in his deposition, described the claims against Dominion as “crazy stuff” — a sentiment that was echoed by other Trump aides whose testimony was presented by the committee.After Mr. Barr left his position as attorney general, his successor, Jeffrey A. Rosen, also told Mr. Trump his claims of widespread fraud were “debunked.”The committee showed through live witnesses and recorded depositions how Mr. Trump refused to listen to those around him.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesAnother witness who testified on Monday and dismissed Mr. Trump’s claims of fraud was Byung J. Pak, the former U.S. attorney in Atlanta who abruptly resigned on Jan. 4, 2021. After speaking with Mr. Barr, Mr. Pak looked into allegations of election fraud in Atlanta, including a claim pushed by Mr. Giuliani that a suitcase of ballots had been pulled from under a table in a local counting station on election night.Mr. Trump and his allies also claimed that there was rampant fraud in Philadelphia, with the former president recently asserting that more people voted in the city than there were registered voters. In his deposition, Mr. Barr called this allegation “rubbish.” To bolster this argument, the committee called Al Schmidt, a Republican who served as one of three city commissioners on the Philadelphia County Board of Elections.Mr. Schmidt rejected the fraud claims raised by Mr. Trump and his allies, saying there was no evidence that more people voted in Philadelphia than were registered there or that thousands of dead people voted in the city.Mr. Schmidt also testified that after Mr. Trump posted a tweet accusing of him by name of committing election fraud, he received threats online from people who publicized the names of his family members, his address and photographs of his home.Zach Montague More