A commemorative bronze duplicate of the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is once again available for purchase, just a little more than a week after it was found to have abruptly vanished from the U.S. Mint’s website.
HuffPost first noted the coin’s removal in late February. When reached for comment at the time, the Mint did not say why the coin had been removed and said only that it “periodically” conducted a review of its portfolio to “focus on those products with the broadest appeal to collectors and other customers.”
The Mint ignored repeated inquiries specifically seeking answers on whose decision it was to remove the coin. D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who was attacked on Jan. 6, 2021, by rioters supporting President Donald Trump, said he also asked the Mint many times about the coin’s removal.
An email he received in response to his inquiries was nearly identical to one HuffPost received when it sent the Mint a series of similar and more extensive questions in February, suggesting it may have been a form response.
The Mint gave the same reply again when asked about the removal and reinstatement on Monday.
Hodges told HuffPost on Saturday that he only learned the coin had been reinstated when a colleague mentioned it to him.
He said the entire ordeal, from the removal to its reinstatement, was “typical lack of transparency and non-answers from an organization neither inclined nor obligated to give them.”
“To be fair, I don’t know if the person answering my inquiries was on board with the insurrection erasure or just replying with what they had to,” Hodges said.
Since January, the “insurrection erasure” Hodges spoke of has been a feature of Trump’s second term. Trump indiscriminately pardoned over 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters, regardless of the severity of their offense, during his first day in office. In some cases, Trump commuted sentences for people who had not yet been sentenced, suggesting there was not an exacting assessment of cases whatsoever.
Then, in the days following those pardons, the Justice Department removed a database detailing criminal charges and convictions tied to Jan. 6 from its website.
Some evidence and records tied to Jan. 6 cases were also deleted last month. The information had been housed inside a public database known as USAfx, which is primarily used by lawyers and journalists. A group of media organizations sued the Justice Department, arguing the deletion violated a long-standing court order to preserve them. A hearing will be held in that case later this week.
Hodges said he was relieved to see the commemorative coin reinstated to the Mint’s website.
“We should remember [Jan. 6] for what it was: an insurrection and terrorist attack on the Capitol of the United States of America, planned and incited by many but most notably Trump, in an effort to install him as a dictator against the free will of the people,” he said.
Over 140 police officers, including Hodges, were assaulted. Hodges nearly had his eye gouged out of its socket by a rioter on Jan. 6 and was almost crushed to death in a tunnel that saw some of the worst violence of the day.
Trump has called Jan. 6 a “day of love” and has referred to people who stormed the Capitol and assaulted police as “patriots.”
“There will always be those who refuse to believe the truth, no matter how much evidence is put in front of them,” Hodges said. “Look at the Holocaust — how many people deny that today? You just have to hope that the truth will out to enough people so that those who live in willful ignorance are ostracized and their conspiracies contained as a sad little contingent of wackos rather than an influential voting bloc.”
Former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who was on the receiving end of racist insults while he defended the Capitol, reflected on the coin’s removal and reinstatement on Monday.
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“When I first saw they were erased, my first thought was, ‘Well, it continues.’ More of the erasing. More of the trying to rewrite history about what did or did not happen that day. I was a little disappointed, though I said to myself, ‘Wow, I’m glad I got mine when they were first made available.’ But it sucks that so many people will now be left out of this opportunity to get a coin,” he said.
Trump “wants to erase everything” about Jan. 6, he said, before expressing gratitude for other law enforcement agents and reporters who have continued to talk about what really happened.
“As long as they continue to try and erase this, we’re always going to push back and make sure that they never forget and never get to rewrite or change what happened that day,” Dunn said.