The False and Exaggerated Claims Still Being Spread About the Capitol Riot
Insisting on factual accuracy does not make one an apologist for the
protesters. False reporting is never justified, especially to inflate threat
and fear levels.
Glenn Greenwald
Feb 17
What took place at the Capitol on January 6 was undoubtedly a politically
motivated riot. As such, it should not be controversial to regard it as a
dangerous episode. Any time force or violence is introduced into what ought
to be the peaceful resolution of political conflicts, it should be lamented
and condemned.
But none of that justifies lying about what happened that day, especially by
the news media. Condemning that riot does not allow, let alone require,
echoing false claims in order to render the event more menacing and serious
than it actually was. There is no circumstance or motive that justifies the
dissemination of false claims by journalists. The more consequential the
event, the less justified, and more harmful, serial journalistic falsehoods
are.
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Yet this is exactly what has happened, and continues to happen, since that
riot almost seven weeks ago. And anyone who tries to correct these
falsehoods is instantly attacked with the cynical accusation that if you
want only truthful reporting about what happened, then you're trying to
"minimize" what happened and are likely an apologist for if not a
full-fledged supporter of the protesters themselves.
One of the most significant of these falsehoods was the tale - endorsed over
and over without any caveats by the media for more than a month - that
Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick was murdered by the pro-Trump mob when
they beat him to death with a fire extinguisher. That claim was first
published by The New York Times on January 8 in an article headlined
"Capitol Police Officer Dies From Injuries in Pro-Trump Rampage." It cited
"two [anonymous] law enforcement officials" to claim that Sicknick died
"with the mob rampaging through the halls of Congress" and after he "was
struck with a fire extinguisher."
A second New York Times article from later that day - bearing the more
dramatic headline: "He Dreamed of Being a Police Officer, Then Was Killed by
a Pro-Trump Mob" - elaborated on that story:
The New York Times, in a now-"updated" article, Jan. 8, 2021
After publication of these two articles, this horrifying story about a
pro-Trump mob beating a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher was
repeated over and over, by multiple journalists on television, in print, and
on social media. It became arguably the single most-emphasized and known
story of this event, and understandably so - it was a savage and barbaric
act that resulted in the harrowing killing by a pro-Trump mob of a young
Capitol police officer.
It took on such importance for a clear reason: Sicknick's death was the only
example the media had of the pro-Trump mob deliberately killing anyone. In a
January 11 article detailing the five people who died on the day of the
Capitol protest, the New York Times again told the Sicknick story: "Law
enforcement officials said he had been 'physically engaging with protesters'
and was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher."
But none of the other four deaths were at the hands of the protesters: the
only other person killed with deliberate violence was a pro-Trump protester,
Ashil Babbitt, unarmed when shot in the neck by a police officer at close
range. The other three deaths were all pro-Trump protesters: Kevin Greeson,
who died of a heart attack outside the Capitol; Benjamin Philips, 50, "the
founder of a pro-Trump website called Trumparoo," who died of a stroke that
day; and Rosanne Boyland, a fanatical Trump supporter whom the Times says
was inadvertently "killed in a crush of fellow rioters during their attempt
to fight through a police line."
This is why the fire extinguisher story became so vital to those intent on
depicting these events in the most violent and menacing light possible.
Without Sicknick having his skull bashed in with a fire extinguisher, there
were no deaths that day that could be attributed to deliberate violence by
pro-Trump protesters. Three weeks later, The Washington Post said dozens of
officers (a total of 140) had various degrees of injuries, but none reported
as life-threatening, and at least two police officers committed suicide
after the riot. So Sicknick was the only person killed who was not a
pro-Trump protester, and the only one deliberately killed by the mob itself.
It is hard to overstate how pervasive this fire extinguisher story became.
Over and over, major media outlets and mainstream journalists used this
story to dramatize what happened:
Clockwise: Tweet of Associated Press, Jan. 29; Tweet of NBC's Richard Engel,
Jan. 9; Tweet of the Lincoln Project's Fred Willman, Jan. 29; Tweet of The
New York Times' Nicholas Kirstof, Jan. 9
Television hosts gravely intoned when telling this story, manipulating
viewers' emotions by making them believe the mob had done something
unspeakably barbaric:
After the media bombarded Americans with this story for a full month without
pause, it took center stage at Trump's impeachment process. As former
federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy noted, the article of impeachment itself
stated that "Trump supporters 'injured and killed law enforcement
personnel.'" The House impeachment managers explicitly claimed on page 28 of
their pretrial memorandum that "the insurrectionists killed a Capitol Police
officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher."
Once the impeachment trial ended in an acquittal, President Joe Biden issued
a statement and referenced this claim in the very first paragraph. Sicknick,
said the President, lost "his life while protecting the Capitol from a
violent, riotous mob on January 6, 2021."
________________________________________
The problem with this story is that it is false in all respects. From the
start, there was almost no evidence to substantiate it. The only basis were
the two original New York Times articles asserting that this happened based
on the claim of anonymous law enforcement officials.
Despite this alleged brutal murder taking place in one of the most
surveilled buildings on the planet, filled that day with hundreds of
cellphones taping the events, nobody saw video of it. No photographs
depicted it. To this day, no autopsy report has been released. No details
from any official source have been provided.
Not only was there no reason to believe this happened from the start, the
little that was known should have caused doubt. On the same day the Times
published its two articles with the "fire extinguisher" story, ProPublica
published one that should have raised serious doubts about it.
The outlet interviewed Sicknick's brother, who said that "Sicknick had
texted [the family] Wednesday night to say that while he had been
pepper-sprayed, he was in good spirits." That obviously conflicted with the
Times' story that the mob "overpowered Sicknick" and "struck him in the head
with a fire extinguisher," after which, "with a bloody gash in his head, Mr.
Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support."
But no matter. The fire extinguisher story was now a matter of lore. Nobody
could question it. And nobody did: until after a February 2 CNN article that
asked why nobody has been arrested for what clearly was the most serious
crime committed that day: the brutal murder of Officer Sicknick with a fire
extinguisher. Though the headline gave no hint of this, the middle of the
article provided evidence which essentially declared the original New York
Times story false:
In Sicknick's case, it's still not known publicly what caused him to
collapse the night of the insurrection. Findings from a medical examiner's
review have not yet been released and authorities have not made any
announcements about that ongoing process.
According to one law enforcement official, medical examiners did not find
signs that the officer sustained any blunt force trauma, so investigators
believe that early reports that he was fatally struck by a fire extinguisher
are not true.
The CNN story speculates that perhaps Sicknick inhaled "bear spray," but
like the ProPublica interview with his brother who said he inhaled pepper
spray, does not say whether it came from the police or protesters. It is
also just a theory. CNN noted that investigators are "vexed by a lack of
evidence that could prove someone caused his death as he defended the
Capitol during last month's insurrection." Beyond that, "to date, little
information has been shared publicly about the circumstances of the death of
the 13-year veteran of the police force, including any findings from an
autopsy that was conducted by DC's medical examiner."
Few noticed this remarkable admission buried in this article. None of this
was seriously questioned until a relatively new outlet called Revolver News
on February 9 compiled and analyzed all the contradictions and lack of
evidence in the prevailing story, after which Fox News' Tucker Carlson,
citing that article, devoted the first eight minutes of his February 10
program to examining these massive evidentiary holes.
That caused right-wing media outlets to begin questioning what happened, but
mainstream liberal outlets - those who spread the story aggressively in the
first place - largely and predictably ignored it all.
This week, the paper that first published the false story - in lieu of a
retraction or an explanation of how and why it got the story wrong - simply
went back to the first two articles, more than five weeks later, and quietly
posted what it called an "update" at the top of both five-week-old articles:
Caption that now sits atop both New York Times articles from Jan. 8 about
Officer SIcknick's death.
With the impeachment trial now over, the articles are now rewritten to
reflect that the original story was false. But there was nothing done by The
New York Times to explain an error of this magnitude, let alone to try to
undo the damage it did by misleading the public. They did not expressly
retract or even "correct" the story. Worse, there is at least one article of
theirs, the January 11 one that purports to describe how the five people
died that day, which continues to include the false "fire extinguisher"
story with no correction or update.
________________________________________
The fire extinguisher tale was far from the only false or dubious claim that
the media caused to circulate about the events that day. In some cases, they
continue to circulate them.
In the days after the protest, numerous viral tweets pointed to a photograph
of Eric Munchel with zip-ties. The photo was used continually to suggest
that he took those zip-ties into the Capitol because of a premeditated plot
to detain lawmakers and hold them hostage. Politico described Munchel as
"the man who allegedly entered the Senate chamber during the Capitol riot
while carrying a taser and zip-tie handcuffs."
The Washington Post used the images to refer to "chatters in far-right
forums explicitly discussing how to storm the building, handcuff lawmakers
with zip ties." That the zip-tie photo of Munchel made the Capitol riot far
more than a mere riot carried out by a band of disorganized misfits, but
rather a nefarious and well-coordinated plot to kidnap members of Congress,
became almost as widespread as the fire extinguisher story. Yet again, it
was The New York Times that led the way in consecrating maximalist claims.
"FBI Arrests Man Who Carried Zip Ties Into Capitol," blared the paper's
headline on January 10, featuring the now-iconic photo of Munchel at the
top.
But on January 21, the "zip-tie man's" own prosecutors admitted none of that
was true. He did not take zip-ties with him from home or carry them into the
Capitol. Instead, he found them on a table, and took them to prevent their
use by the police:
Eric Munchel, a pro-Trump rioter who stormed the Capitol building while
holding plastic handcuffs, took the restraints from a table inside the
Capitol building, prosecutors said in a court filing Wednesday.
Munchel, who broke into the building with his mom, was labeled "zip-tie guy"
after he was photographed barreling down the Senate chamber holding the
restraints. His appearance raised questions about whether the
insurrectionists who sought to stop Congress from counting Electoral College
votes on January 6 also intended to take lawmakers hostage.
But according to the new filing, Munchel and his mother took the handcuffs
from within the Capitol building - apparently to ensure the Capitol Police
couldn't use them on the insurrectionists - rather than bring them in when
they initially breached the building.
(A second man later whose photo with zip-ties later surfaced similarly told
Ronan Farrow that he found them on the floor, and the FBI has acknowledged
it has no evidence to the contrary).
Why does this matter? For the same reason media outlets so excitedly seized
on this claim. If Munchel had brought zip-ties with him, that would be
suggestive of a premeditated plot to detain people: quite terrorizing, as it
suggests malicious and well-planned intent. But he instead just found them
on a table by happenstance and, according to his own prosecutors, grabbed
them with benign intent.
Then, perhaps most importantly, is the ongoing insistence on calling the
Capitol riot an armed insurrection. Under the law, an insurrection is one of
the most serious crises that can arise. It allows virtually unlimited
presidential powers - which is why there was so much angst when Tom Cotton
proposed it in his New York Times op-ed over the summer, publication of
which resulted in the departure of two editors. Insurrection even allows for
the suspension by the president of habeas corpus: the right to be heard in
court if you are detained.
So it matters a great deal legally, but also politically, if the U.S. really
did suffer an armed insurrection and continues to face one. Though there is
no controlling, clear definition, that term usually connotes not a
three-hour riot but an ongoing, serious plot by a faction of the citizenry
to overthrow or otherwise subvert the government.
Just today, PolitiFact purported to "fact-check" a statement from Sen. Ron
Johnson (R-WI) made on Monday. Sen. Johnson told a local radio station:
"The fact of the matter is this didn't seem like an armed insurrection to
me. I mean armed, when you hear armed, don't you think of firearms? Here's
the questions I would have liked to ask. How many firearms were confiscated?
How many shots were fired? I'm only aware of one, and I'll defend that law
enforcement officer for taking that shot.
The fact-checking site assigned the Senator its "Pants on Fire" designation
for that statement, calling it "ridiculous revisionist history." But the
"fact-checkers" cannot refute a single claim he made. At least from what is
known publicly, there is no evidence of a single protester wielding let
alone using a firearm inside the Capitol on that day. As indicated, the only
person to have been shot was a pro-Trump protester killed by a Capitol
police officer, and the only person said to have been killed by the
protesters, Officer Sicknick, died under circumstances that are still
completely unclear.
That protesters were found before and after the riot with weapons does not
mean they intended to use them as part of the protest. For better or worse,
the U.S. is a country where firearm possession is common and legal. And what
we know for certain is that there is no evidence of anyone brandishing a gun
in that building. That fact makes a pretty large dent in the attempt to
characterize this as an "armed insurrection" rather than a riot.
Indeed, the most dramatic claims spread by the media to raise fear levels as
high as possible and depict this as a violent insurrection have turned out
to be unfounded or were affirmatively disproven.
On January 15, Reuters published an article about the arrest of the
"Q-Shaman," Jacob Chansley, headlined "U.S. says Capitol rioters meant to
'capture and assassinate' officials." It claimed that "federal prosecutors
offered an ominous new assessment of last week's siege of the U.S. Capitol
by President Donald Trump's supporters on Thursday, saying in a court filing
that rioters intended 'to capture and assassinate elected officials.'"
Predictably, that caused viral social media postings from mainstream
reporters and prominent pundits, such as Harvard Law's Laurence Tribe,
manifesting in the most ominous tones possible:
Laurence Tribe @tribelaw
Some of the individuals who breached the Capitol intended to "capture and
assassinate elected officials," federal prosecutors wrote in this new court
filing. This is part of what Trump must answer for in his Senate trial and
in post-1/20/21 prosecutions
January 15th 2021
711 Retweets2,127 Likes
Shortly thereafter, however, a DOJ "official walked back a federal claim
that Capitol rioters 'intended capture and assassinate elected officials.'"
Specifically, "Washington's acting U.S. Attorney, Michael Sherwin, said in a
telephone briefing, 'There is no direct evidence at this point of
kill-capture teams and assassination.'"
NBC News, Jan. 15, 2021
Over and over, no evidence has emerged for the most melodramatic media
claims - torn out Panic Buttons and plots to kill Vice President Mike Pence
or Mitt Romney. What we know for certain, as The Washington Post noted this
week, is that "Despite warnings of violent plots around Inauguration Day,
only a smattering of right-wing protesters appeared at the nation's
statehouses." That does not sound like an ongoing insurrection, to put it
mildly.
All this matters because it always matters if the media is recklessly
circulating falsehoods about the most inflammatory and significant news
stories. As was true for their series of Russiagate debacles, even if each
"mistake" standing alone can be dismissed as relatively insignificant or
understandable, when they pile up - always in the same narrative direction -
people rightly conclude the propaganda is deliberate and trust in journalism
erodes further.
But in this case, this matters for reasons far more significant than
corporate media's attempt to salvage the last vestiges of their credibility.
Washington, D.C. remains indefinitely militarized. The establishment wings
of both parties are still exploiting the emotions surrounding the Capitol
breach to justify a new domestic War on Terror. The FBI is on the prowl for
dissidents on the right and the left, and online censorship in the name of
combatting domestic terrorism continues to rise.
One can - and should - condemn the January 6 riot without inflating the
threat it posed. And one can - and should - insist on both factual accuracy
and sober restraint without standing accused of sympathy for the rioters.
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