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President Biden was briefly eclipsed Thursday by the 7-year-old daughter of a U.S. Capitol Police officer who died in April after being struck by a car at a barricade.
Shortly before Biden signed a bill awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to all law enforcement officers who responded to the deadly January 6 riot on the United States Capitol, he pointed to Abigail Evans and motioned for her to join him at the White House Rose Garden office. .
After Abigail rushed over to the president, followed by her brother Logan, Biden pulled her in for a one-arm hug. As the girl greeted Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden began signing the legislation with a series of ceremonial pens.
“It’s a silly way to do it,” the president told Abigail. “Mom will explain it to you later.”
After signing the bill, Biden handed three of the pens to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) And Senator Roy Blunt (D-Mo. ). With that done, he gathered the rest and said to Abigail, “Now you have to help me.”
“Will you give every one of the people over there a pen?” He asked, pointing to the law enforcement officers who participated in the signing ceremony. “And then I’ll get you some pens, okay?” Abigail duly retrieved the pens and handed them out.
Abigail’s father, U.S. Capitol Police Officer Billy Evans, helped defend the building from pro-Trump rioters in hopes of disrupting Congressional certification of the 2020 election results. Evans is deceased on April 2 after being hit by a car driven by Noah Green, 25, a self-proclaimed follower of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan who was shot and killed by police.
On Thursday, Biden said that Evans and his fellow Capitol Constable Brian Sicknick, who died the day after the riot, “had given the full measure of their dedication to the country to the United States Capitol.”
“It’s nice to be honored and remember those you lost, but it’s hard to be here because it brings everything back as it happened 10 minutes ago,” the president told the Evans and Sicknick families. “So I offer you not only our condolences, but I recognize your courage, the courage of your children. And you have our deepest gratitude.
Biden and Abigail once crossed paths in a ceremony where Officer Billy Evans’s body was honored in the Capitol Rotunda. The President, who was seated next to Evans’ family, appeared to pick up a toy Abigail had dropped in her way to deliver a speech, and handed Logan what looked like a presidential coin on her way to the return.
“I have an idea of how you feel. I buried two of my children, ”Biden said that day in remarks to Evans’ widow Shannon. “And people have come to you and are going to come to you for a while and say, ‘I know how you feel.’ … They will tell that to the children. They’re going to tell his ex-wife that. And after a while – you know everyone’s well-meaning – you feel like saying, “You have no idea. “
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