Sicknick family 'outraged' by Fox News' Tucker Carlson over Jan. 6 video

WASHINGTON – The family of U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick joined Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger in blasting Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday for showing “cherry-picked” video from calmer moments of the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, rather than the “chaos and violence” that erupted that day in what officers described as Medieval warfare.

Carlson got exclusive access to 41,000 hours of surveillance video recorded the day of the riot from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. Carlson portrayed the event Monday on his program as “mostly peaceful” and described as liars the officials from President Joe Biden to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for calling the attack a “deadly insurrection.”

The riot was theworst attack on the Capitol in 200 years. About 140 police officers were injured during the attack; Officer Sicknick, a South River native, died the next day and at least four others died by suicide in the weeks that followed. Fellow officers described hand-to-hand combat with rioters, as officers slipped in blood and vomit on the Capitol steps. More than 1,000 people have been charged in the attack and more than 500 have been convicted, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Tuesday.

Manger criticized the program for saying police officers acted as tour guides and portraying calmer moments during the day. “This is outrageous and false,” Manger said in an internal department statement.

“The tape that we reviewed from within the building on that day proves it was neither an insurrection nor deadly,” Carlson said. “Everything about that phrase is a lie. Very little about Jan. 6 was organized or violent. Surveillance video from inside the Capitol shows mostly peaceful chaos.”

Carlson focused part of his report on Officer Sicknick, who died the day after the riot from two strokes, which the medical examiner ruled was natural causes.

Sicknick was sprayed by chemicals outside the Capitol and collapsed, according to witnesses. Officer Caroline Edwards, who was near Sicknick and saw him fall, described battling rioters as “an absolute war zone,” with officers slipping on their own blood.

Sicknick, who grew up in South River, attended Middlesex County Vocational and Technical Schools’ East Brunswick Campus and then joined the New Jersey Air National Guard. He deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1999 in support of Operation Southern Watch. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks he served in Kyrgyzstan, in support of the war in Afghanistan. He was honorably discharged in 2003 and joined the Capitol Police.

Sicknick’s family issued a statement to CBS News that said they were “outraged at the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called news network of Fox News.”

Julian Khater, formerly of the Somerset section of Franklin, who joined the mob's attack on the Capitol, was sentenced in January to more than six years in prison for using pepper spray to assault police officers, one of whom was Sicknick.

Khater's friend and co-defendant, George Tanios, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of disorderly and disruptive conduct and was ordered to 12 months of supervised release.

Manger called Carlson’s accusation about Sicknick the most disturbing of the program.

“The Department maintains, as anyone with common sense would, that had Officer Sicknick not fought valiantly for hours on the day he was violently assaulted, Officer Sicknick would not have died the next day,” Manger said.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who headed the committee that investigated the attack, criticized McCarthy for deciding “it was more important to give in to a Fox host who spews lies and propaganda than to protect the Capitol and the police, members, and staff that serve in it.”

Senate leaders of both parties also criticized Carlson for denying the violence on Jan. 6.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., held up Manger’s statement and said he agreed with everything he said about what happened on Jan. 6.

“Clearly, the chief of the Capitol police in my view correctly describes what most of us witnessed firsthand on Jan. 6,” McConnell said. “It was a mistake in my view for Fox News to depict this in a way that is legally at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.”

Contributing: USA TODAY staff writer Bart Jansen

This article originally appeared on MyCentralJersey.com: Tucker Carlson 3/6/23 episode angers Brian Sicknick family