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.
By Glenn Greenwald
February 17, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - 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.
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:
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.
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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, Ashli 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:
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:
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 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:
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.’"
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 inherently 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.
Glenn Greenwald is a journalist,
constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York
Times bestselling books on politics and law. His
most recent book, “No Place to Hide,” is about the
U.S. surveillance state and his experiences
reporting on the Snowden documents around the world.
Prior to co-founding The Intercept, Greenwald’s
column was featured in The Guardian and Salon.
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