Injustice

Remembering Howie Liebengood

Reading how President Trump has blithely pardoned more than a thousand of his “January 6” rioter pals – an act that will live in modern infamy – I am thinking of no one so much as Howard Liebengood Jr., his Dad Howard Sr., and the family that survives them.

“Howie,” the son, was a uniformed officer of the U.S. Capitol Police in Washington DC. On the day when the word of the January 6, 2024, insurrection was flashed to the world, Howie and fellow officers went directly to the Capitol steps.

There they were viciously attacked, many of them beaten by the mob, before it violently stormed past them to enter the Capitol building. Howie survived that assault, but then he didn’t. Within days, the emotional weight of what happened took a terrible toll. Howie committed suicide - one of four Capitol Police officers who took their own lives in the days after the riot.

Howard Liebengood Jr.

This young man didn’t deserve such treatment, or such a fate. On Saturday, I spoke with some of Howie’s friends in Nashville, and learned how he was but the latest in a family line of distinguished public service.

Howie’s father, Howard Liebengood Sr., was a Vietnam veteran and a lawyer (trained at Vanderbilt University School of Law) who served in Washington in many capacities of high public trust. In 1973, Howard Sr. joined Fred Thompson, a law school classmate, as part of the Republican minority counsel staff to the Senate Watergate Committee. There, Howard Sr. worked closely with Senator Howard Baker, the committee’s ranking Republican member, and he would be professionally identified with Senator Baker ever after.

Howard Sr. became a specialist in national intelligence and later staffed the Senate’s Intelligence Committee. Before he left Washington, returning to Nashville and his law practice, Howard Sr. was the U.S. Senate’s Sergeant-at-Arms.

But Washington was not done with Howie’s dad. When Thompson became Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Howard Sr. was his chief of staff. After Fred’s death, in 2015, Howard held the same position with Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee. When Howard Sr. died, in 2005, Frist put a stirring eulogy into the Congressional Record, including these words:

“He treated everyone, from Senators to interns, with a graciousness and genuine regard,” Frist said. “Howard also reached across the aisle. He was known as the peacemaker for his ability to bring opposing sides together. Indeed, one of his great regrets was what he saw to be the growing partisanship in politics.”

Today that partisanship has become extreme – even deadly – in our nation, and the family of Howard Sr. and Howie Liebengood have paid a terrible price for it.

The son like his distinguished father also believed in the importance of his own duties, his sworn service to protect the US Capitol and all the people who work and visit there. Read more about Howie, his career, and his final days here.

We will never know Howie’s final thoughts in the moments before he died. His friends whom I reached this weekend speculated that, given the family’s history, Howie may have believed that he had sorely “disappointed” his father when the Capitol was overrun, and that this was more regret than he could bear.

I do know this: Howie Liebengood deserved much better treatment than he got at the hands of Trump’s angry mob – and much more than his family got this week from a vengeful new President with an indiscriminate pardon pen, who cannot tell the difference between the vile and their victims.

Today, on only Day Seven of a new Trump era, we can only pray to Heaven: God save us all.

© 2025 Keel Hunt