To find the plaque honoring law enforcement for protecting the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, you must head to the circular room under the Rotunda known as the Crypt, sidestep an “Authorized Personnel Only” sign, amble down two sets of stairs, and walk down a narrow hall. Only after passing the security desk will you glimpse the bronze plaque mounted this past weekend on the granite wall near the west entrance.
Police officers who waited years to see the homage to “the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy” finally installed are unhappy it doesn’t occupy a more prominent space commanding public view.
But Sen. Thom Tillis, the lawmaker arguably most responsible for its debut three years after Congress ordered its installation, is fine with that.
“Some people say, well, it doesn't get a lot of traffic. It actually gets the traffic that I want. It's the way that you move out to the inauguration. I mean, every president that will go to that podium will go by that plaque,” the North Carolina Republican told National Journal. “So I think it's a fitting reminder for presidents about the peaceful transition of power and [to remember] the intended insurrectionists who came in and damaged this building and tried to disrupt our proceedings that day.”
Tillis said the decision to promote the plaque was not made to embarrass the president. Nor, he said, should it be seen as an act of defiance by Republicans who seem increasingly willing to push back against parts of his agenda.
A 2022 law required the plaque be mounted on the “western front” of the Capitol on the House side. But House Speaker Mike Johnson delayed its installation, asserting that it was “not implementable.” That prompted Tillis and Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley to introduce a resolution in January—that passed without opposition—to have it placed on the Senate side, facing the wall it was supposed to be mounted on 10 feet away. (The hallway bisects the House and Senate sides of the Capitol).
The marker lists the names of 21 local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies including the D.C. police, the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. Capitol Police. Visitors can access a QR code next to the plaque which links to a list of the thousands of law enforcement officers working for those agencies. That includes the five police officers who served at the Capitol that day and died in the days and months following the attack, including Brian Sicknick, who was attacked with pepper spray.
Tillis said he was surprised it took so long to hang a plaque he deems uncontroversial, and that he would have pushed the issue much earlier had he been tracking it more closely. He called it “unacceptable” that hundreds of pro-Trump rioters who attacked police that day in an effort to disrupt the ceremonial certification of the electoral vote recognizing Joe Biden’s victory were pardoned more than a year before the officers were formally recognized.
“You could see they'd been hit. One of them was bleeding. They're holding the line,” Tillis said about the police officers while motioning toward the hallway lawmakers were hustled through when the Capitol was breached. “That was on January 6. These people that did that got pardoned before we recognized their contribution. And that's embarrassing.”
Trump, who pardoned some 1,500 supporters who entered the Capitol that day, has referred to them as “patriots” and said they deserve some compensation for the prosecutions they faced under the Biden administration. Trump's Justice Department settled a nearly $5 million wrongful-death lawsuit with the family of Ashli Babbitt, a rioter whom Capitol Police shot as she tried to break through into the Speaker’s Lobby next to the House chamber.
Tillis has continued to be an irritant to the president ever since he announced last summer that he would not seek reelection. Trump had threatened to primary him for not supporting the One Big Beautiful Bill.
Unburdened with not having to appease Trump’s MAGA base, the two-term centrist has broken from the White House on key issues.
He has vowed not to vote for any Trump nominee for the Federal Reserve until the administration's criminal investigation into Chair Jerome Powell is resolved. He voted against the president’s tariffs on Brazil last fall, saying the move was based on Trump’s political grievance with the South American country rather than on sound economic policy. And his public denunciation of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem earlier this month helped send her packing from Trump’s Cabinet.
Tillis also opposed Trump's nomination last year of Ed Martin as the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., citing the lawyer's work defending a number of Jan. 6 defendants. The opposition killed Martin's chances of getting the job.
Despite his rifts with the administration, Tillis maintains he still has a good relationship with the president. And he cautioned not to read too much into the unanimous-consent vote to authorize the Jan. 6 plaque’s placement as a larger sign that Republicans on Capitol Hill were beginning to sour on the president.
In this case, it was just a matter of decency and common sense, he said.
“If you're equating being a conservative to standing up for those thugs that damaged this building and injured police officers, you're out of your mind,” he said. “There's not a conservative principle to that. It’s not a law-and-order [stand]. I mean, I don't even know what people excuse that. I'm very angry about it, and I'd love to find the person who actually made the recommendation to pardon all those folks, because it was wrong.”
He added that President Biden deserves a measure of blame for “over-prosecuting” some of those who showed up Jan. 6.
“Biden went after people that just were dumb—they were out there, they got lost in the moment,” he said. “What happened is there was a lot of over-prosecution where people should have probably been pardoned and released. They paid money. They may have lost their jobs. They paid the price."
But, he added: "These people that laid hands on our police officers that damaged this building? Unacceptable.”
Later that afternoon, Tillis walked the hallway where future presidents will pass to admire the plaque for the first time.
