(Tony Sifert, Headline USA) Rolling Stone, a magazine which has been repeatedly outed as a purveyor of hoaxes — most notoriously with it’s entirely fabricated 2014 story about a rape at the University of Virginia — has published an article which falsely implies that Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick‘s death on Jan. 7, 2021 was caused by J6 protestors, according to TGP FactCheck.
While reporting on the partisan J6 Committee’s efforts to hold former President Donald Trump responsible for the events of Jan. 6, Rolling Stone reporter William Vaillancourt described Sicknick’s death as the result of contact with a “chemical irritant” sprayed by someone in the crowd.
“Sicknick suffered two strokes and died of natural causes the day after he engaged Trump supporters who sprayed him with a chemical irritant on the perimeter of the Capitol,” Vaillancourt wrote.
However, according to TGP FactCheck, Sicknick died from natural causes and was not killed by chemical irritants.
“The DC Coroner specifically looked for evidence of an allergic reaction or for other internal signs of reaction to a chemical irritant and found none,” TGP FactCheck wrote. “There is no evidence to support the claim Sicknick died from chemical irritants.”
Sicknick’s brothers, Ken and Craig, have been making the rounds on the leftist networks in order to seed the idea that Trump belongs in prison.
Ken Sicknick told CNN’s John Berman that prison for Trump is “the least that could happen.”
Even the normally reliable Daily Mail has gotten in on the act, TGP FactCheck reported.
In an article reporting on a letter of condolence that Prince William sent to Sicknick’s girlfriend, Daily Mail reporters Jennifer Smith and Rachel Bunyan suggested that pepper spray could have contributed to the officer’s death.
“A medical examiner last year ruled that he died of natural causes brought on by two massive strokes, but they could not prove whether the strokes were the result of any injury he suffered in the riot,” Smith and Bunyan wrote. “Sicknick’s family say they are convinced the strokes were caused by him being pepper-sprayed.”
According to TGP FactCheck, however, there is no official question regarding Sicknick’s death.
“Every governmental body that has researched this issue, including the DC Coroner and the Department of Justice, have concluded that Brian Sicknick died from natural causes,” TGP wrote.
