Officer Sicknick Was Killed, Right?

The Hunt to Find the Murderer of a Man Who Died a Natural Death

On May 14 I posted a column titled, “Concrete Evidence” That January 6 Was a “Planned Disaster,” and followed up with a May 15 column , “A Closer Look at the NY Times Game-Changing J6 Lie.” As proven, the New York Times propagated a lie that “pro-Trump” mobs bashed in the head of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick with a fire extinguisher.

Within weeks of January 6, the lie had begun to lose momentum. There was one primary reason why: no one had been arrested. This was getting awkward. On February 2, CNN finally noticed. “Authorities have reviewed video and photographs that show Sicknick engaging with rioters amid the siege,” lamented CNN, “but have yet to identify a moment in which he suffered his fatal injuries.”

On that same day, as it happened, President Joe Biden and wife Jill paid tribute to Sicknick whose remains lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda. As CNN observed, “Lying in state is typically reserved for leaders of American government.” Two US Capitol Police officers had been so honored in 1998, but they had been shot to death by a schizophrenic. Their memorial was not political theater. CNN also noted that the feds, given the absence of evidence that Sicknick was murdered, were “struggling to build a federal murder case.”

Some key people in Washington knew Sicknick had not been murdered. They had been made aware of Sicknick’s autopsy results. The DC Medical Examiner’s office had performed the autopsy on January 8 before the fire extinguisher story gained traction. At the time, no one thought to amend the results.

Heading tbe Medical Examiner’s office was Dr. Roger Mitchell, a black activist who had already interfered in the George Floyd case. In the Floyd case, Mitchell had pressured Hennepin County Medical Examiner Andrew Baker to add “neck compression” to the final report. That was an easy fix. Even with the delay, the corrupted autopsy results were made public one week after Floyd’s death.

Unable to finesse “blunt force trauma” into Sicknick’s report, the DC Medical Examiner’s office did the next best thing. They sat on the results until forced out by a Judicial Watch lawsuit more than 100 days after the autopsy.

On that unhappy day in Democratic America, the United States Capitol Police (USCP) conceded the obvious: “The USCP accepts the findings from the District of Columbia's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner that Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes.” That said, the USCP brass, like the rest of official Washington, were not giving up on the politically useful murder myth: “This does not change the fact Officer Sicknick died in the line of duty, courageously defending Congress and the Capitol.”

In that same press release, the USCP identified the men who killed Sicknick “in the line of duty.” These were Julian Elie Khater, 32, of State College, Pennsylvania, and George Pierre Tanios, 39, of Morgantown, West Virginia. Both were arrested on March 14, more than a month before the autopsy report was released, and held without bail. The charges did not include murder, but they might as well have. Assault with a dangerous weapon, one that resulted “in significant bodily injury,” did the trick.

After 18 months in the DC Gulag, and seeing that no DC jury had acquitted a J6er, Khater pleaded guilty to “two counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon.” Caught in a scrum an hour after the USCP ordered its “less lethal” team to launch its gas canisters, “Khater sprayed pepper spray from a canister in his right hand at the officers.”

According to court documents, Sicknick was eight feet away from Khater. The second officer he sprayed, a female, he hit “directly in the eyes from only a few feet away.” She survived as did the hundreds of cops and protestors who were also sprayed that day.

As to Tanios, his alleged crime was to give his friend Khater the pepper spray. He had successfully petitioned his way out of pre-trial custody after five months in the gulag and was released to home detention. The judge sentenced him to time served but took no pity on Khater. The media would not have let him. Khater after all was the man who murdered Officer Sicknick. In January 2023, Khater was sentenced to 80 months in prison.

Only in the rarest circumstances is pepper spray lethal. These circumstances include spraying a person with a pre-existing condition, or a person in an enclosed space, or on someone who is being restrained, or, “in rare cases,” someone allergic to capsicum. Khater’s encounter with the seemingly healthy Sicknick took place outside the Capitol.

In April 2021, the Washington Post interviewed Francisco J. Diaz, the DC medical examiner who replaced Roger Mitchell. According to the Post, “The autopsy found no evidence the 42-year-old officer [Sicknick] suffered an allergic reaction to chemical irritants, which Diaz said would have caused Sicknick’s throat to quickly seize. Diaz also said there was no evidence of internal or external injuries.” (italics added)

The Post continued, “Diaz said Sicknick suffered two strokes at the base of the brain stem caused by a clot in an artery that supplies blood to that area of the body.” The clotting was not likely a reaction to a COVID shot. The politically favored USCP was the rare police force whose officers were spared a COVID mandate.

Evidence be damned! Democrats hang on their lies long beyond their expiration date. In a January 2025 press release New Jersey Democrats used bold face to condemn the Trump pardons: “The release of Julian Khater, who brutally assaulted Officer Brian Sicknick – a proud New Jerseyan who gave his life defending our democracy – is an appalling miscarriage of justice and a slap in the face to law enforcement officers everywhere.”

Yes, there was “an appalling miscarriage of justice.” It was not Trump’s pardon. It was that Khater and Tanios had been hounded and punished for killing a man who authorities knew had died of natural causes. If that is not a miscarriage of justice, what exactly is?