Ex-Rep. Liz Cheney was set to receive a coveted medal from President Biden on Thursday even as President-elect Trump threatens to target her for prosecution over her work on the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack.
Cheney will be honored with the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second highest civilian honor, along with fellow Jan. 6 committee leader Rep. Bennie Thompson and 18 other luminaries like ex-Knicks great Bill Bradley.
“President Biden believes these Americans are bonded by their common decency and commitment to serving others,” the White House said in a statement. “The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.”
Cheney, a onetime Republican rising star, and Thompson led the House committee that investigated the violent attack that aimed to block Congress from certifying Biden’s 2020 election win.
The committee’s final report, which amounts to the most comprehensive official account of the attack, blamed Trump of engineering a conspiracy to overturn the results of the election he lost and egging on his supporters to storm the Capitol. Thompson wrote that Trump “lit that fire.”
Trump has derided the committee members and said they should all be jailed for unspecified crimes.
A House committee accused Cheney of improperly communicating with committee star witness Cassidy Hutchinson, prompting Trump to warn that she could be “in a lot of trouble.”
Biden is considering whether to hand out preemptive pardons to Cheney, Thompson and others whom Trump has targeted for retribution.
Bradley, who served three terms as U.S. senator from New Jersey and mounted an unsuccessful 202 presidential bid after retiring from the NBA , will also be honored. Another recipient is former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a Democrat who served New York’s 4th on Long Island. McCarthy championed gun restrictions following the deaths of her son and husband in a mass shooting on the Long Island Rail Road.
Biden is also giving the award to former Sens. Ted Kaufman (D-Delaware) and Chris Dodd ((D-Connecticut); attorney Mary Bonauto, who fought to legalize same-sex marriage; and Evan Wolfson, a leader of the marriage equality movement.
Other honorees include Frank Butler, who set new standards for using tourniquets on war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse during the Vietnam War who founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation; and Eleanor Smeal, an activist who led women’s rights protests in the 1970s and fought for equal pay.
Photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, will be honored as well.
The Presidential Citizens Medal was created by President Richard Nixon in 1969 and is the country’s second highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It recognizes people who “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”