Ex-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, hyping the gravity of the US Capitol riot after Republicans blocked a special probe, falsely claimed the mob killed a police officer. Twitter users quickly set the record straight.
“An angry mob attacked our Capitol, our lawmakers and our election,” Clinton tweeted on Friday, after Senate Republicans blocked a vote on legislation that would create a commission to investigate the January 6 riot. “They killed a policeman. And Republican leaders would rather we all not know more about what happened.”
Clinton is far from the only high-profile Democrat who has dramatized the Capitol attack to demonize former-president Donald Trump, whom they accused of inciting the “insurrection,” and portrayed support for him as “domestic terrorism.” In fact, President Joe Biden has repeatedly called the incident the worst attack on the American democracy since the Civil War.
Also on rt.com US Capitol riot probe blocked as Senate Republicans use FILIBUSTER to stall action on bill creating 9/11-style commissionHowever, her statement was perhaps one of the most blatantly false. The rioters were initially blamed for the deaths of five people, but four of those – including three Trump supporters and US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick – died of medical conditions.
Contrary to early media reports claiming he was bludgeoned to death, Sicknick died after suffering two strokes in his office, hours after the riot ended. After months of delay in investigating his death, Washington’s chief medical examiner said in April that the officer had died of natural causes.
As Twitter commenters pointed out to Clinton, the only person whose life was taken during the riot was Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by a still-unidentified police officer as she tried to climb through a broken window into the Speaker’s Lobby, a room near the House chamber.
“You are flat-out lying about the murder of a police officer,” Arizona congressional candidate Josh Barnett told Clinton. “That’s not what happened. You disgrace yourself with more lies.”
Los Angeles mayoral candidate Kevin Dalton argued that while those who stormed the Capitol were “idiots,” Clinton’s “continuing to perpetuate a lie that has been debunked numerous times” was only “slightly stupider.”
Max Abrahms, an author and professor of political science, noted that a police officer was killed during an attack on the Capitol, “but it happened on April 2, not January 6, and was perpetrated by a follower of Louis Farrakhan, not the Republican Party.” He was referring to an incident in which Noah Green – whose actions were disavowed by the Nation of Islam – plowed his car into a barricade at the Capitol complex, striking and killing Officer William Evans.
Clinton supporters tried to defend her statement, arguing that Sicknick died as a consequence of the riot, even though investigators determined that a clot in an artery had caused the fatal strokes.
Others lamented that the minority party was able to block an independent investigation into the riot for what they claimed were political reasons. Podcast host Greg Hyde quipped that “if it had happened in Benghazi, maybe they’d do something about it,” alluding to the GOP-led probes of the 2012 attack on US diplomatic facilities in Libya, during Clinton’s watch as secretary of state, when two diplomats and two security contractors were killed.
Like this story? Share it with a friend!