WASHINGTON — Visitors to the U.S. Capitol will now have a visible marker of the siege there on Jan. 6, 2021, and a reminder of the officers who fought and were injured that day.
Steps from the Capitol's West Front and where the worst of the fighting occurred, workers quietly have installed a plaque honoring the officers, three years after it was required by law to be erected. The plaque was placed on the Senate side of the hallway because that chamber voted unanimously in January to install it after House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had delayed putting it up.
"On behalf of a grateful Congress, this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021," the plaque says. "Their heroism will never be forgotten."
The Washington Post first reported the installation of the plaque, which was witnessed by a reporter about 4 a.m. EST Saturday. It is the first official marker of the violent day in the Capitol.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., led the recent effort to install it as he commemorated the fifth anniversary of the attack on the Senate floor in January and described his memories of hearing people break into the building. "We owe them eternal gratitude, and this nation is stronger because of them," he said of the officers who were overwhelmed by thousands of President Donald Trump's supporters and eventually pushed them out of the building.
The mob of rioters who violently forced their way past police and broke in were echoing Trump's false claims of a stolen election after the Republican was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden. The crowd stopped the congressional certification of Biden's victory for several hours, sent lawmakers running and vandalized the building before police regained control. More than 140 officers from the U.S. Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department and other agencies were injured.
The fight to have the plaque installed came as Trump returned to office last year and the Republican Congress has remained loyal to him. Trump, who has called Jan. 6 a "day of love," has tried to deflect blame on Democrats and police for instigating the attack, and many Republicans in Congress have downplayed the violence.
3 years of delays
Congress passed a law in 2022 that set out instructions for the honorific plaque listing the names of officers "who responded to the violence that occurred." It gave a one-year deadline for installation, but the plaque never went up.
Democrats who were angry about the missing plaque installed replicas of it outside their offices and called on the GOP leadership to erect it or explain why it was missing.
After more than a year of silence — and a lawsuit from two officers who fought at the Capitol that day — Johnson's office put out a statement on Jan. 5, the night before the fifth anniversary of the attack, that said the statute authorizing the plaque was "not implementable" and the proposed alternatives also "do not comply."
Tillis went to the Senate floor later that week and passed a resolution, with no objections from any other senators, to place the plaque on the Senate side.
Officers object
One of the officers who sued, Daniel Hodges of the Metropolitan Police Department, said Saturday that the lawsuit would continue.
Hodges, who was crushed and beaten by rioters while trapped in the central west front doors steps away from where the plaque is now displayed, said the overnight installation was a "fine stopgap" but that it was not in full compliance of the law.
The original statute said that the plaque should be placed "on" the west front of the Capitol — not near it — and that the officers names should be listed on the plaque itself. The new installation has a nearby sign with a QR code that leads to a 45-page document listing the thousands of names of the officers who responded to the Capitol that day.
"The weight of a judicial ruling would help secure the memorial against future tampering," Hodges said. "Our lawsuit persists."
Hodges and a former U.S. Capitol Police officer, Harry Dunn, said in the lawsuit that Congress was encouraging a "rewriting of history" by not following the law and installing the plaque.
"It suggests that the officers are not worthy of being recognized, because Congress refuses to recognize them," the lawsuit says.
The Justice Department has sought to have the case dismissed. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and others argued that Congress "already has publicly recognized the service of law enforcement personnel" by approving the plaque and that displaying it would not alleviate the problems they claim to face from their work.
Memories of the day
More than 1,500 people were charged after the attack, among the largest federal prosecutions in the nation's history. When Trump returned to power in January 2025, he pardoned all of them within hours of taking office.
Hodges, Dunn and other officers who have told of their experiences that day have been repeatedly criticized and threatened by people loyal to Trump who say the officers are lying. Some officers say they are still struggling.
The lawsuit says that "both men live with psychic injuries from that day, compounded by their government's refusal to recognize their service."
New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the top Democrat on the spending committee that oversees the legislative branch, said "our Capitol Police deserve more" and that he would continue to push Johnson on the issue.
"Make no mistake: they did this at 4AM so no one would see, no ceremony, no real recognition," Espaillat posted on X.
The top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, New York Rep. Joe Morelle, said he was pleased that the plaque was "finally in the Capitol."
"Whether some people like it or not, the record of that day is now part of this building," Morelle said.
Associated Press contributor Allison Robbert contributed to this report.
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