Biden is giving the second highest civilian award to the leaders of the January 6 congressional panel

President Joe Biden gives Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson the second highest award – lawmakers who led the congressional investigation into the January 6, 2021, violence at the US Capitol by Donald Trump's supporters, and Trump said they should be arrested.

Biden will honor 20 citizens at a ceremony Thursday at the White House, including Americans fighting for marriage equality, a pioneer in treating wounded soldiers, and two of the president's longtime friends, former Sens. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.

“President Biden believes that these Americans are bound by the same respect and commitment to serving others,” the White House said in a statement. “The country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.”

Biden last year honored people who participated in protecting the Capitol from protesters, or who helped protect the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election, when Trump tried and failed to change the results.

Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming, and Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, headed the House committee that investigated the treason. Cheney later said he would vote for Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race and even campaigned with her, which angered Trump. Biden has been considering whether to grant the first pardon to Cheney and other Trump targets.

Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take office on January 20, still refuses to retract his lies about the 2020 presidential race and has said he will pardon the protesters once he takes office.

In an interview with NBC's “Meet the Press,” Trump said, “Cheney did something for no reason, and Thompson and the people on the non-selective committee of political criminals and, you know, they're crazy,” saying without evidence that they “removed. and they destroy” the evidence they collect.

“Actually, they should go to jail,” he said.

Biden also presented the award to attorney Mary Bonauto, who fought for same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, a leader of the marriage equality movement.

Other honorees include Frank Butler, who set new standards for the use of tourniquets in 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.

He also presented the award to photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.

Other honored former legislators include former Sen. Bill Bradley, DN.J.; former Senator Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, DN.Y., who fought for gun safety measures after her son and her husband were shot.

Biden will posthumously honor four people: Joseph Galloway, a former military journalist who wrote about the first major war in Vietnam in the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young”; civil rights lawyer and attorney Louis Lorenzo Redding; former Delaware district judge Collins Seitz; and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was captured with other Japanese Americans during World War II and challenged the arrest.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom, established by President Richard Nixon in 1969, is the second highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is awarded to those “who have performed exemplary acts of service to their country or fellow citizens.”