“While Congress has installed a memorial to other officers who died in a different tragedy, it has not installed the plaque to honor those who defended the Capitol on January 6,” the lawsuit claims. “Meanwhile, though Congress has not installed the memorial to the officers who defended it, members have managed to honor the man who inspired the violence.”
Two police officers who were on-duty at the capitol during the January 6 riots have filed a federal lawsuit asking the courts to order the Trump administration to install a plaque dedicated to law enforcement personnel who protected the Capitol during the attacks.
The lawsuit states that a law enacted under former President Joe Biden required the honorary plaque to be hung in the U.S. Capitol no later than March 2023. The plaque was completed last year, but it has been in storage ever since—and conservative Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has thus far refused to commit to its installation.
According to CBS News, the two plaintiffs in the lawsuit are former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn and Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges. Together, the two officers say that President Donald Trump has created conspiracy theories dismissive of the riots, which have since been adopted and propagated by his Republican allies in Congress.
“After Congress passed the law, the politics of January 6 began to change,” the lawsuit alleges. “Donald Trump began to call the attack on the Capitol ‘a day of love,’ and said that ‘the cops should be charged and the protesters should be freed.’”
“As Trump’s political fortunes rebounded, elected officials began to parrot his claims about the day,” the lawsuit alleges.
The complaint specifically alleges that the Trump administration’s failure to install the plaque violates the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. It also claims that the office of the Architect of the Capitol, responsible for preserving the building and its grounds, never took reasonable measures to ensure compliance with the 2022 law.
“There seems to be no indication that congressional leadership is going to install this without judicial intervention,” said attorney Brendan Ballou, a former Justice Department prosecutor now providing legal assistance to the plaintiffs.
“Congress was required by law to install this plaque to honor the officers that defended the Capitol and those inside on Jan. 6,” Ballou told CBS News. “They have not done so, and they have not done so two years past the legal deadline.”
“While Congress has installed a memorial to other officers who died in a different tragedy, it has not installed the plaque to honor those who defended the Capitol on January 6,” the lawsuit claims. “Meanwhile, though Congress has not installed the memorial to the officers who defended it, members have managed to honor the man who inspired the violence.”
“Since President Trump’s inauguration, bills have been introduced to make his birthday a federal holiday, to rename Dulles International Airport after him, to put his face on the $100 bill (or to create a new $250 bill in his honor), and to carve his face into Mount Rushmore,” the lawsuit adds.
Some Democratic legislators have indicated that the failure to install the plaque lies almost exclusively with their conservative counterparts, with Rep. Joe Morell (D-NY) saying that the memorial is “still sitting in storage because Republican leadership refuses to act. Until they condemn these pardons and honor these officers, their hollow words of support for law enforcement are meaningless.”
Sources
Jan. 6 officers sue over missing honorary plaque at Capitol
Police officers file civil lawsuit seeking court order to hang Jan. 6 plaque at U.S. Capitol
Police officers who defended Capitol on January 6 sue to have memorial installed
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