Rioters clash with police and security forces at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Brent Stirton/Getty Images
Ken Sicknick on Friday appeared on CNN’s “New Day” in the aftermath of Thursday’s January 6 hearing.
The brother of fallen Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick placed blame on the riot on Trump.
“I’d like to focus on the fact that he’s responsible for it happening in the first place,” he said.
The brother of a late US Capitol police officer on Friday pointed to Donald Trump and his “sycophants” for the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
During an interview on CNN’s “New Day,” Ken Sicknick — the brother of the late officer Brian D. Sicknick — told reporter Kaitlan Collins of his frustrations with the revelations from Thursday’s January 6 committee hearing.
In an extraordinary January 9, 2021 text exchange — revealed by the panel — between Trump’s 2020 campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh and deputy campaign spokesperson Matthew Wolking, Murtaugh remarked that it was “shitty” of the then-president to have not “acknowledged the death of the former police officer.”
Wolking replied, “That is enraging to me. Everything he said about supporting law enforcement was a lie.”
Officer Sicknick suffered two strokes and passed away on January 7, 2021.
The Washington, DC, chief medical examiner ruled that he died of natural causes.
The question remains of what Trump was doing for the more than three hours between 1:10 p.m., when the then-president was ending his remarks at the Ellipse, and 4:17 pm., when he uploaded a video urging his supporters to leave the Capitol complex.
“We are focusing on the fact that he just didn’t act at all for three hours, which is just absolutely ridiculous,” Ken Sicknick said on CNN. “For the first time in a long time, I’m angry from seeing it again and realizing that he did nothing.”
He continued: “Overall, we should be focused on the fact that he started this whole thing to begin with. So yeah, he’s at fault for not stopping it, but he’s really at fault for riling up the crowds and getting his sycophants following whatever word he said. I’d like to focus on the fact that he’s responsible for it happening in the first place.”
Ken Sicknick then called out Trump what he said was the former president’s lack of concern about the country.
“It’s obvious to me that his existence in the White House had nothing to do with helping the country, had nothing to do with looking out for the best interest of the country,” he said.
“The silence of the three hours? It could have been him stuck, deciding whether to say something. But ultimately it was him covering his rear end and him making sure that he was in power and that he could not admit to anything happening and I can’t comprehend him not doing a thing to stop that. He knew what was going on minutes after his little rally,” he added.
Gladys Sicknick, the mother of fallen US Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, listens as Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards testifies before the House committee investigating the January 6 attack in Washington, DC, on June 9, 2022.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Gladys Sicknick, the mother of the officer, and another brother, Craig Sicknick, also joined Ken Sicknick and Collins for the interview.
His family members expressed how it difficult it was to continue to find out more information regarding what Officer Sicknick faced on the day he fought back insurrectionists who broke down the Capitol doors and invaded the building.
“I thought it would get easier after almost two years of this, but it’s getting harder and harder, especially as you learn new things that are coming out,” Gladys Sicknick said.
Craig Sicknick said that Trump’s behavior cast a negative light on the country.
“It’s extraordinarily frustrating,” he told Collins. “The president is supposed to represent the country and we’re so far been overall a pretty good world example of how to run things. With the last administration, that went right out the window.”
Officer Sicknick’s partner Sandra Garza, who did not appear in the latest CNN interview, has also supported the government probing the riot.
When legislation creating a January 6 commission was being debated in the Senate last year, Garza went to Capitol Hill with Gladys Sicknick and Capitol police officer Harry Dunn to meet with GOP lawmakers to address their overwhelming opposition to the bill. After a GOP-led Senate filibuster doomed legislation for a bipartisan panel, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California created a select committee.