Congressional gold medals to police officers who protected Capitol from rioters on Jan 6

Top House and Senate leaders will present law enforcement officers who defended the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 with Congressional Gold Medals on Tuesday, awarding them Congress's highest honour nearly two years after they fought with former President Donald Trump's supporters in a brutal and bloody attack.

To recognise the hundreds of officers who were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, the medals will be placed in four locations at the U.S. Capitol Police headquarters, the Metropolitan Police Department, the Capitol and the Smithsonian Institution. 

President Joe Biden said when he signed the legislation last year that a medal will be placed at the Smithsonian museum so all visitors can understand what happened that day.

The ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda comes as Democrats, just weeks away from losing their House majority, race to finish a nearly 18-month investigation of the insurrection. 

Democrats and two Republicans conducting the probe have vowed to uncover the details of the attack, which came as Trump tried to overturn his election defeat and encouraged his supporters to fight like hell in a rally just before the congressional certification.

Awarding the medals will be among House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's last ceremonial acts as she prepares to step down from leadership. 

When the bill passed the House more than a year ago, she said the law enforcement officers from across the city defended the Capitol because they were the type of Americans who heard the call to serve and answered it, putting country above self.

They enabled us to return to the Capitol, and certify Biden's presidency, she said then, to that podium that night to show the world that our democracy had prevailed and that it had succeeded because of them.

Dozens of the officers who fought off the rioters sustained serious injuries. 

As the mob of Trump's supporters pushed past them and into the Capitol, police were beaten with American flags and their own guns, dragged down stairs, sprayed with chemicals and trampled and crushed by the crowd. 

Officers suffered physical wounds, including brain injuries and other lifelong effects, and many struggled to work afterward because they were so traumatized.

Four officers who testified at a House hearing last year spoke openly about the lasting mental and physical scars, and some detailed near-death experiences.

Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges described foaming at the mouth, bleeding and screaming as the rioters tried to gouge out his eye and crush him between two heavy doors. 

Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who rushed to the scene, said he was grabbed, beaten, tased, all while being called a traitor to my country.

Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn said a large group of people shouted the N-word at him as he was trying to keep them from breaching the House chamber.

At least nine people who were at the Capitol that day died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot and killed by police as she tried to break into the House chamber and three other Trump supporters who suffered medical emergencies.

Two police officers died by suicide in the days that immediately followed, and a third officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and later died after one of the rioters sprayed him with a chemical.

A medical examiner determined he died of natural causes.

Several months after the attack, in August 2021, the Metropolitan Police announced that two more of their officers who had responded to the insurrection had died by suicide.

The circumstances that led to their deaths were unknown.

Signing the bill at the White House last year, Biden said the officers' heroism cannot be forgotten.