JFK PROFILE IN COURAGE AWARD TO HONOR VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE FOR CERTIFYING 2020 ELECTION

MEDIA RELEASE

April 3, 2025

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John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award to Honor

Vice President Mike Pence for Certifying 2020 Election

BOSTON, MA – The 2025 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award® will be presented to Vice President Michael R. Pence for putting his life and career on the line to ensure the constitutional transfer of presidential power on January 6, 2021. The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award is presented annually by the JFK Library Foundation to public servants for making a courageous decision of conscience without regard for the personal or professional consequences. Caroline Kennedy and Jack Schlossberg will present the award at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on May 4, 2025 in Boston, MA.

Statement from Kennedy and Schlossberg:

“Political courage is not outdated in the United States. At every level of government, leaders are putting country first, and not backing down.

Despite our political differences, it is hard to imagine an act of greater consequence than Vice President Pence’s decision to certify the 2020 presidential election during an attack on the U.S. Capitol. Upholding his oath to the Constitution and following his conscience, the Vice President put his life, career, and political future on the line.

His decision is an example of President Kennedy’s belief that an act of political courage can change the course of history.”

Statement from Vice President Pence:

“I am deeply humbled and honored to be the recipient of the Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. I have been inspired by the life and words of President John F. Kennedy since my youth and am honored to join the company of so many distinguished Americans who have received this recognition in the past.”

Despite extraordinary pressure to single-handedly overturn the results of the 2020 election, Vice President Mike Pence stood firm in his commitment to democracy and ensured the constitutionally mandated transfer of power. On January 6, 2021, as the presidential election certification process unfolded, a violent mob determined to halt the certification stormed the U.S. Capitol and openly threatened Pence. While the Secret Service urged him to evacuate, Pence chose to remain at the Capitol, coordinating with military and Congressional leaders during the attack. Once the Capitol was cleared, Pence resumed the certification process, confirming the election results and demonstrating his resolve to uphold his constitutional duty.

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https://www.jfklibrary.org/about-us/news-and-press/press-releases/2025-profile-in-courage-award-announcement

>>22877739

>>22877746

Still waiting for Kash to actually do something and not just take credit for what the FBI already had in the works!

F.B.I. Leaders Push to Restore Trust in the Agency They Once Undermined

In recent days, Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, and Dan Bongino, his deputy, have promised to bring change to what they have called a broken institution.

April 4, 2025

Kash Patel, wearing glasses and a striped tie, seated at a hearing.

Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, during a hearing at the Capitol last month. Before ascending to his post, Mr. Patel repeatedly distorted the facts about the bureau’s investigation of Russian meddling into President Trump’s 2016 campaign.Kenny Holston/The New York Times

Before they took control of the F.B.I., the bureau’s two top leaders, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, were some of the agency’s most rabid critics, attacking it at every turn for years.

But now that they are running the agency, the two men have pulled a kind of bait-and-switch: In recent emails to thousands of F.B.I. employees, they have sought to use the bureau’s damaged reputation — a reputation that they themselves helped tear down — as a rationale for bringing reforms to the supposedly broken organization.

“Over the past few years, the F.B.I.’s reputation has been damaged in the eyes of our employers, the American people,” Mr. Patel wrote on Wednesday in one of the messages. “I know each of you, serving across this great nation, are tackling cases that will further the betterment of the communities in which you live and work.”

“Times of change can be uneasy, but they are necessary,” he went on. “Business as usual is no longer business as usual.”

Absent from Mr. Patel’s communications with his 38,000 employees was any mention of the persistent assaults that he himself has launched against the F.B.I. over the years.

Before he ascended to the post of F.B.I. director, Mr. Patel repeatedly distorted the facts about the bureau’s investigation of Russian meddling into President Trump’s 2016 campaign. He has also been a central purveyor of conspiracy theories, accusing federal agents of having helped instigate the attack by Mr. Trump’s supporters on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

This tactic of officials campaigning to restore trust in public institutions that they themselves helped to damage has been used before by Mr. Trump and his allies. After Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election, he and his supporters promoted widespread lies that the race was marred by fraud, only to use their own false statements as a basis for their efforts to overturn the vote count.

Mr. Patel’s email described what many F.B.I. agents believed they have been doing all along, even before he took control of the bureau: Investigating possible violations of federal laws. And they say that nothing has changed since Mr. Patel took the helm, though they are deeply worried about the current leadership and whether the bureau will tackle cases that could lead to a clash with the White House.

In offering agents extensive praise for the work that they were already doing, the email also seemed like a tacit acknowledgment that Mr. Patel was trying to do more to win the trust and loyalty of his skeptical subordinates.

The message came only days after Mr. Bongino wrote a similar letter to the F.B.I. staff on Monday, saying he would set “aside any personal politics” and he would not act as a “partisan political figure.”

Mr. Bongino’s comments were an attempt to distance himself from the endless broadsides he made against Democrats as a popular podcaster.

Luke William Hunt, a professor at the University of Alabama and a former F.B.I. agent who testified Wednesday before a congressional subcommittee examining the bureau, said Mr. Bongino’s comments were a stretch of the imagination.

“‘Disregard everything I said,’” Mr. Hunt said. “‘I am now a straight shooter.’ That’s laughable. It would be foolish or naïve to believe a statement like that. You’re asking an F.B.I. agent, who looks at the evidence, to believe that everything that is on print or on video is not representative of who they are.”

It remains unclear, even 30 days after Mr. Patel arrived at the F.B.I. what sorts of changes he intends to carry out. He has moved senior executives into new jobs and current and former agents applauded some of those choices.

But some of those moves appear at odds with Mr. Patel’s past derision of the F.B.I.’s aggressive approach to Jan. 6. The new assistant director Mr. Patel named to run the Washington field office, Steven J. Jensen, was in charge of the bureau’s domestic terrorism operations section on that day, and he played a key role in responding to the attack on the Capitol.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/kash-patel-fbi-trust.html