WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden at a police officers’ memorial ceremony Wednesday again honored the officers who died as a result of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, part of his predecessor’s coup attempt.
“We remember all of our law enforcement who defended our Capitol and our democracy on that terrible day,” Biden said at the annual National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service on the Capitol building’s west lawn.
Biden did not mention former president Donald Trump by name, but by praising police for their work on Jan. 6 was able to draw a clear contrast nevertheless.
Trump, whose weeks of lies about the 2020 election having been “stolen” from him, culminating with a pre-coup rally near the White House, never praises the 140 Capitol and Washington, D.C., police officers who were injured by his mob that day, nor the five who died in the coming days and weeks, four of them by suicide.
Instead, Trump regularly glorifies those who assaulted police on his behalf on Jan. 6, and he’s offered convicted rioters pardons if he wins. The presumptive GOP nominee often opens his campaign events by standing at attention and saluting as he plays a recording of incarcerated Jan. 6 attackers as they sing the national anthem, interspersed with Trump’s reading of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Biden has previously honored officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6. He gave a number of them the Presidential Citizens Medal in a White House ceremony on the second anniversary of that day.
In speeches, he has frequently thanked them for saving American democracy. As president-elect, he attended a memorial service for officer Brian Sicknick, who died hours after being assaulted at the Capitol. And as president, he signed legislation extending death benefits to the families of the four who died by suicide in the weeks that followed the attack.
Trump, who was on Jan. 6, 2021, still the sitting president, neither attended Sicknick’s service nor contacted his family members.
Despite this, a number of police unions around the country have endorsed Trump as he runs for the White House again — even though Trump faces criminal charges for his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6.
The Supreme Court is currently reviewing Trump’s claim that he cannot be prosecuted on federal charges for his coup attempt because he was president at the time and his conduct that day was part of his official duties.
Trump faces a second prosecution based on his post-election actions in Georgia for his efforts to overturn his election loss there.
An unrelated federal case against him is based on his refusal to turn over secret documents he took with him when he left the White House to his South Florida country club.
And he is currently on trial in New York City. Trump is charged there for falsifying business records in an effort to hide a $130,000 hush money payment to a porn star in the days ahead of the 2016 election.
Should Trump win the presidency back, he would almost certainly order the Department of Justice to dismiss the federal cases against him, and could likely force Georgia prosecutors to put their case on hold until he is no longer in office.