U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy on Tuesday extended a “really heartfelt thank you” to two Capitol Police officers and two D.C. Metropolitan Police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol against mobs of Donald Trump supporters on Jan. 6. She suggested the officers might have saved her life.


What You Need To Know

  • Rep. Stephanie Murphy extended a 'heartfelt thank you' to four officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6

  • Murphy, D-Winter Park, says police protected her and a fellow congresswoman during the siege

  • She spoke to the four officers during a House select committee hearing investigating the insurrection

Murphy, D-Winter Park, made her comments during a House select committee hearing on the Jan. 6 insurrection and revealed that she and U.S. Rep. Kathleen Rice, D-N.Y., might have been “the only members of Congress to be down there on that lower West Terrace,” an area of violence during the insurrection of the Capitol.

Murphy told the four officers, who testified at Tuesday’s select-committee hearing, that she and Rice had taken refuge in an office there as law enforcement defended the Capitol from the mobs.

“We thought for sure being in the basement in the heart of the Capitol was the safest place we could be,” she told the officers. “And it turned out that we ended up at the center of the storm.”

The attacks, by Trump supporters who sought to overturn the November election of President Joe Biden, ultimately led to the deaths of seven people, including three law enforcement officers, according to a U.S. Senate report on the incident. The Justice Department cites “approximately 140” assaults on police officers.

The insurrection has led to the arrests of more than 500 people, according to the U.S. Justice Department. The arrests include more than 50 in Florida and at least 39 in Central Florida and Tampa Bay.

During several minutes of speaking, Murphy spoke slowly and sometimes appeared to hold back tears.

"Most people don’t know this, and I don’t think even you know this, but your actions had a profound impact on me,” she told the officers.

“I listened to you struggle. I listened to you yelling out to one another. I listened to you care for one another, directing people back to the makeshift eyewash station that was at the end of our hall. And then I listened to people coughing, having difficulty breathing, but I watched you and heard you all get back into the fight.”

To one officer, Murphy said, “you had said you were 250 feet off of that tunnel and you felt certain that they were going to kill you. Imagine if they had caught the two members of Congress that were just 40 feet from where you all were.”

To two other officers, she said, “you both said you didn’t realize that other parts of the Capitol had been breached, but you really felt like you were the last line of defense. Well, I’m telling you that you were our last line of defense.”

To Officer Daniel Hodges of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, Murphy said, “In that video where you were sacrificing your body to hold that door, it gave Congresswoman Rice and I and the Capitol Police officers who had been sent to extract us the freedom of movement in that hallway to escape down the other end of that hallway. And I shudder to think what would have happened had you not held that line.”

She told Hodges she has a 10-year-old son a 7-year-old daughter.

“And they’re the light of my life,” she said. “And the reason that I was able to hug them again was because of the courage that you and your fellow officers showed that day. And so just a really heartfelt thank you.”

Murphy added: “I think it’s important for everybody, though, to remember that the main reason rioters didn’t harm any members of Congress is because they didn’t encounter any members of Congress. And they didn’t encounter any members of Congress because law enforcement officers did ... your jobs that day.”