U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) shared the video below and wrote: “A new Republican Senator tried to pass a law last night that would increase minimum sentences for assaults against police officers, except for assaults on police officers on January 6. I went to floor to object and tell him how dangerous that is. Here’s part of the exchange.”
A new Republican Senator tried to pass a law last night that would increase minimum sentences for assaults against police officers, except for assaults on police officers on January 6.
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) May 15, 2025
I went to floor to object and tell him how dangerous that is. Here's part of the exchange. pic.twitter.com/eXPGCoIt52
Washington Post journalist Jonathan Greenberg replied to Murphy: “Promoting an insurrection exception to law and order. This is what today’s Republican Party has become.”
Murphy spoke to Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), who filed the bill called the “Larry Henderson Act” — named for an officer killed on duty in Cincinnati. The bill would set a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison for anyone convicted of assault on a federal officer, more than doubling the current minimum.
Concurring with Moreno’s conviction that penalties should be harsh for officer assault, Murphy objected to carving out the January 6 rioters from commensurate punishment and said the law couldn’t work with political exceptions.
Talking about January 6 to Moreno, Murphy emphasized the dangerous consequences of making political exceptions and described rioters to whom “your political affiliation mattered that day.”
Those rioters, Murphy said, “were here to harm not allies of President Trump but opponents of President Trump. They had a gallows outside with Mike Pence’s name on it. They were searching the halls of the Capitol for people who opposed Donald Trump’s agenda.”
Murphy then said unequivocally that the reason those January 6 rioters were pardoned is because “President Trump supported the violence so long as it was in his name.”
Those pardons and Trump’s rewards for fealty and violent acts committed to support his agenda change the applicability of the law, Murphy asserted.
It “puts officers in jeopardy all over the country,” Murphy said, “if the potential perpetrators of violence against police officers have an idea in their head that if they’re doing it in support of Donald Trump, they have a pretty good chance to get away with it.”
