Dead Capitol Police Officer’s Family Slams ‘Sleazy’ Fox News Over Jan. 6 Footage

The family of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, is furious that Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired video footage of him as part of Carlson’s renewed effort to downplay the violence on that day. 

Sicknick was pepper sprayed and fought with rioters on Jan. 6, as he fought to keep supporters of then-President Donald Trump from overrunning the building. He died the next day. After an autopsy, the D.C. Medical Examiner ruled that Sicknick died of “natural causes” rather than as a direct result of injuries sustained during the riot, but added that “all that transpired [on Jan. 6] played a role in his condition.”

On Monday night, Carlson aired a video that he said showed Sicknick on Jan. 6 confronting rioters in the crypt of the Capitol, which Carlson claimed was after the time when Sicknick had been pepper sprayed.

Carlson said the video showed that Democrats had turned Sicknick into a “prop” and a “martyr” for political purposes, and that the Capitol police officer appeared “healthy and vigorous” in the footage. Carlson said that made it “hard to imagine” his death the next day had anything to do with the injuries he sustained that day.

Carlson’s minimizing portrayal of the day outraged Sicknick’s family. “Every time the pain of that day seems to have ebbed a bit, organizations like Fox rip our wounds wide open again, and we are frankly sick of it,” the Sicknick family said in a statement about Carlson’s claims, which was first reported by CNN.

“The Sicknick family is outraged at the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called ‘news’ network of Fox News who will do the bidding of Trump or any of his sycophant followers, no matter what damage is done to the families of the fallen, the officers who put their lives on the line, and all who suffered on Jan 6th due to the lies started by Trump and spread by sleaze slinging outlets like Fox,” the statement continues.

Carlson, a right-wing demagogue with a huge viewership, has spent the past two years spinning conspiracy theories about the Capitol riot. He was given exclusive access to 44,000 hours of video footage of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, as part of a deal McCarthy made to secure enough far right-wing votes to win the speakership in January. McCarthy has so far refused to make that footage available to any other news outlet.

The Fox News host used it to selectively air previously unseen video on his Monday show that sought to portray those who stormed the Capitol as largely peaceful, while avoiding countless hours of video that show rioters attacking police officers. 

“Taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that Jan. 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim,” Carlson said on the show.

Sicknick’s mother, Gladys Sicknick, had previously called Republicans’ refusal to set up a bipartisan commission to investigate the riot a “slap in the face.”