Corporate Media Is Still Lying About Brian Sicknick’s Death, Even After DOJ Dropped Charges
You wouldn’t know it from today’s corrupt corporate media headlines, but the man who was falsely accused of assaulting the late U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick on January 6 was only charged and pled guilty to two misdemeanor crimes on Wednesday afternoon.
The Department of Justice originally charged George Tanios, a sandwich shop owner in West Virginia, with “Assault on Federal Officer with Dangerous Weapon; Conspiracy to Injure an Officer; Civil Disorder and Obstructing or Impeding Any Official Proceeding; Physical violence on restricted grounds, while carrying dangerous weapon, and resulting in significant bodily injury; Violent entry and disorderly conduct, act of physical violence on Capitol Grounds,” after he was caught on camera at the Capitol riot in 2021.
After Tanios spent months in jail for reportedly hurting a police officer and a delayed trial, the DOJ drastically reduced those charges on Wednesday morning from 10 indictments, including some felonies, to just two misdemeanors: trespassing and disorderly conduct on restricted Capitol grounds. Both charges have nothing to do with injuring Capitol police.
Corporate media coverage of the dropped charges and Tanios’ subsequent plea, however, seemed to suggest that the man was still connected to the death of Sicknick by way of assault.
Some journos tweeted as much.
Other outlets such as the Washington Post, Reuters, and NBC News published headlines that deceptively omitted the fact that Tanios’s final charges were unrelated to Sicknick and his death.
“W.Va. man pleads guilty after being charged in Jan. 6 assault on Capitol police officer who died a day later of natural causes,” the Washington Post reported on Wednesday afternoon.
Tanios and his co-defendant Julian Khater were both arrested in March of 2021 after the FBI claimed to have identified them carrying and using the chemical spray against Capitol law enforcement including Sicknick in footage from the Capitol chaos.
“The officers were temporary blinded by the substance, were temporary disabled from performing their duties and needed medical attention and assistance from fellow officers,” the criminal complaint read. “They were initially treated with water in an effort to wash out the unknown substance from their eyes and on their face. All three officers were incapacitated and unable to perform their duties for at least 20 minutes or longer while they recovered from the spray.”
As Julie Kelly, a senior writer at American Greatness reported, Khater and Tanios were wrongly accused of being cop killers and smeared by the press, the Biden administration, and others.
Recall that the Washington D.C. chief medical examiner found in April of 2021 that Sicknick died on Jan. 7 of natural causes after suffering two strokes. Yet, that didn’t stop the press and others including Capitol police from claiming that Sicknick’s death was Trump’s followers’ fault.
That dangerous and false narrative even kept Tanios from obtaining release from D.C. District Judge Thomas Hogan who still claimed that Tanios “attacked uniformed police officers.”
Ever since the Capitol riot, the corrupt press has intentionally muddied the waters around Jan. 6 and Sicknick’s death to deliver a certain political narrative.
The most egregious coverage of Sicknick’s death came from the New York Times, which claimed Sicknick was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher during the riot. This outrageous and unverifiable claim was later used by House Democrats in the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump. It also heavily informed coverage about Tanios, his arrest, and his subsequent trial.
The Times quietly corrected the allegation almost a month later but not before other outlets such as the BBC, USA Today, and the Associated Press printed it.
As evidenced by coverage today, the corporate media still have a vengeance for Tanios and other J6 defendants, even those who were falsely accused of crimes they never committed.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
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