Now they tell us. Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes.
About a week ago, three months after Officer Sicknick’s death in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill security breach, we reported that a cause of death for him had still not been made public. That seemed especially odd since Sicknick’s body had to have been cremated before Feb. 2, as it wasn’t his “body” that lay in honor inside the Capitol rotunda as news reports had said, but his urn.
Normally, a body is not cremated until a cause of death has been determined and a death certificate issued. Yet, over two months after his cremation, we still hadn’t been told the cause of death. His family really wanted to know, and even they were left in the dark.
Recall that Sicknick is the officer who allegedly was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher by a Trump rioter inside the Capitol building and killed by blunt force trauma. Many establishment media outlets ran with that story just days after the rally.
At the time, there were eyewitness reports — which turned out to be mistaken — of Sicknick being carried out on a gurney, blood gushing from a head wound. The media went wild with the idea that a Trump supporter had killed a member of law enforcement.
There were reports that a member of the Capitol Hill police force had been “beaten to death with a fire extinguisher.” And President Trump had incited this, of course! In fact, reference to the death-by-fire-extinguisher was even included in the subsequent House impeachment documents against him.
Then, on Monday, a day in which the headlines were completely dominated by closing arguments in the Derek Chauvin case, they finally chose to release the cause of death for Sicknick. And so it’s official.
Officer Sicknick wasn’t killed by a blow from a fire extinguisher. Nor was he the victim of any other injury. He was not hit at all. The day after the event, he suffered two strokes and died of natural causes. Natural causes.
I can’t prove this, but it’s worth considering the possibility that the actual cause of death has been known for some time, and that someone was waiting for a moment in the news cycle when it could be released with as little attention as possible. Monday was such a time.
Investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald commented on the story Monday in a series of tweets.
The “fire extinguisher” story had months to build in the media, long after it was determined that witness reports about a gash on Sicknick’s head were wrong. One other theory being pursued was that Sicknick had suffered some kind of delayed reaction to pepper spray or bear spray.
But as The Washington Post reported, “Francisco J. Diaz, the medical examiner, said the autopsy found no evidence the 42-year-old officer suffered an allergic reaction to chemical irritants, which Diaz said would have caused Sicknick’s throat to quickly seize.”
That’s also something that would have been known right away.
The fact that “there was no evidence of internal or external injuries” would have been known sometime in January, before the body was cremated.
Greenwald tweeted a produced montage of media stories with this comment: “Just look at this short excerpt of how we drowned in a totally false story for a full month — one that was crucial to the narrative because only Sicknick could be said to have been killed by deliberate violence by pro-Trump protesters.”
Just look at this short excerpt of how we drowned in a totally false story for a full month — one that was crucial to the narrative because only Sicknick could be said to have been killed by deliberate violence by pro-Trump protesters. Watch: pic.twitter.com/nrmifW6Ifq
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 17, 2021
Greenwald, who himself comes from the left politically, has had an epiphany about what leftists doing to destroy free speech and substitute false narratives. (And how they detest him for it.)
As he tweeted, “The corporate media lies to you constantly because they only care about pleasing the political ideology and flattering the preconceptions of their audience. [Substack] & similar platforms allow truth to be aired, which is why they hate it.”
Substack is a platform that reporters who want to tell us what they know without the fear of censorship or “cancelation” are increasingly turning to. It’s part of the new alternative media, the backlash we’ve been telling you about. Look for the best in reporting from Greenwald, Matt Taibbi and others there. In fact, Taibbi recently posted on Substack his own expose of fake stories, which we shared.
Anyway, Greenwald continues, patiently explaining to the thick-of-skull that telling the truth is not the same as defending the protesters. I haven’t defended the protesters, either — they did a boneheaded thing with unfortunate long-term consequences — but I believe we all deserve the truth about what happened that day.
“There’s no such thing as a ‘noble lie,’” Greenwald wrote, “especially in journalism. This particular fabrication made its way into the impeachment trial against Trump and out of Joe Biden’s mouth. It was clear from the start it was highly dubious, but few journalists cared: it served its purpose.”
Apparently, those who dared to express doubts about the fire extinguisher story were labeled on social media as “Sicknick Truthers.” Hadn’t heard that one, but it doesn’t surprise me.
“What the media did here is staggering and revolting,” Greenwald wrote, “even judging them by their lowly standards.” I second that motion.
Greenwald’s whole series of tweets on this subject, including the responses from the left and what he says in reply, will tell you all you need to know about today’s politically saturated “journalism.” Greenwald is convinced their left-wing audience wants to be lied to, “for partisan gain and emotional pleasure,” and I don’t doubt it.
He posted a must-read article about this on Substack, saying the media got caught this time in a big lie after weaponizing it to go after President Trump and his supporters.
The media kept reporting that “five people died” in the “insurrection,” failing to mention that the only person actually killed was an unarmed Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, shot by a Capitol Police officer who remains unidentified and uncharged. Kurt Schlichter has a typically outspoken commentary about that.
Of course, we’re just coming off the fake “Russian bounty” hoax, too, which was, not surprisingly, first by The New York Times. What the media do when they’re caught in a lie is just quickly move on to the next tall tale. Never apologize, never retract the story, just keep swimming like sharks.
Yes, I know there’s a sucker born every minute, but the media are so obvious and predictable, it’s a wonder so many are taken in.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
