As Democrats on Saturday prepared to call witnesses in the failed second impeachment attempt against former president Donald Trump, the New York Times quietly corrected—and then stealth-edited—its original reporting about the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.
Originally, in the days after the Jan. 6 uprising at the US Capitol, the newspaper had set in motion the widely reported narrative that Sicknick was killed by blunt-force trauma after having been bludgeoned by Trump supporters with a fire hydrant.
But the holes in the Times‘ anonymously-sourced claims quickly began to show, including the fact that a healthy Sicknick had spoken by telephone with his brother in the hours after the incursion.
Although the Times‘s headline still falsely asserted Sicknick’s cause of death, it subsequently qualified its statements within the body of the piece, posting the following update:
“New information has emerged regarding the death of the Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick that questions the initial cause of his death provided by officials close to the Capitol Police.”
As reported by American Greatness columnist Julie Kelly, the paper also removed statements that factually asserted Sicknick’s cause of death.
Those claims, which had originally been attributed to “two law enforcement officials,” suddenly changed to being sourced by “officials close to the Capitol Police.”
Kelly noted that countless partisan Democrats with a long track-record of using dishonest media leaks to their political advantage suddenly fit the description.
“[T]hey could have been anyone from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to inveterate liar U.S. Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to the Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., Muriel Bowser,” Kelly wrote.
Although Sicknick was, himself, a Trump supporter, his death proved immensely convenient for the anti-Trump, leftist Establishment in shifting the focus of the narrative away from the murder of protestor Ashli Babbitt at the hands of police who were protecting the Speaker’s Lobby.
No official information about the officer who used deadly force against Babbitt has yet been released, although no charges are expected.
That episode stands in stark contrast with the upcoming trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who stands accused of having murdered drug-addict George Floyd while attempting to subdue him with a neck restraint.
Likewise, no official charging documents or medical reports have been released in conjunction with Sicknick’s death—believed to have been a stroke—nor in the case of two officers who later committed suicide, and whom House impeachment managers speciously and exploitatively attempted to include in the final death tally.
After the brief but poignant defense by Trump’s legal team on Friday focused on exposing several ways in which Democrats had intentionally altered evidence, the Times‘s backpedaling on Saturday may have reflected a shift in strategy by the Left’s chief play-callers.
“The Times’ correction might be one reason why Democrats on Saturday reversed their demand to subpoena witnesses,” wrote Kelly.
“House impeachment managers cited the original January 8 Times’ article as evidence in their impeachment memo: ‘The insurrectionists killed a Capitol Police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher,'” she continued. “Any arrangement to compel testimony would have provided Trump’s legal team with an opportunity to expose yet another myth in the Democrats’ ‘incitement’ case against the former president.”
However, Kelly remained cynical that the reversal would change public perception now that the Left has succeeded in spreading its “Big Lie” about the mostly peaceful Jan. 6 protest.
“Unfortunately, like so many media-manufactured stories about Donald Trump and his supporters, millions of Americans already believe the Sicknick story as truth; even a Times’ correction won’t change their minds,” she wrote.
“The truth in all matters related to Donald Trump is only of secondary concern, if at all. And once again, reporters who egregiously exploited a man’s untimely death to score political points against a man they revile won’t be held accountable,” she concluded. “Another hoax down the memory hole.”
