The brother of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who died shortly after being assaulted during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, says his death was “in vain” after President Donald Trump on Monday pardoned more than 1,500 participants in the Capitol attack.
“I feel that my brother died in vain and that our nation has a very long and dark road ahead of it,” Craig Sicknick told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday. “As far as I am concerned, the U.S. just installed its first dictator.”
Brian Sicknick’s parents shared a similar sentiment that called Trump’s pardons an “undoing of the justice that was previously determined by the Court’s sentencing of Brian’s assailants.”
“It is our hope that the truth of what happened that tragic day will survive, irrespective of partisan political objectives,” they said in a public statement. “We are proud of our son’s defense of American Democracy, and the continued efforts of his fellow officers to safeguard the seat of government, and the Constitution which guides it; our hearts go out to them as they cope with all that has occurred, and we pray for their strength and fortitude to continue their important mission.”
Sicknick, 42, died one day after engaging with the rioters while defending the Capitol. He suffered two strokes at the base of his brain stem, caused by a clot in an artery, and died of natural causes, a medical report concluded.
Then-acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said Sicknick died from “the injuries he suffered defending the U.S. Capitol.”
President Joe Biden posthumously awarded Sicknick the Presidential Citizens Medal for his “courage and selflessness during a moment of peril for our nation.” He was among 12 police officers and state election officials to receive the medal for resisting Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
The medal is one of the nation’s highest civilian honors.
Rioter Julian Khater, 35, who sprayed Sicknick and other officers with pepper spray during the attack, pleaded guilty to the assaults and was sentenced to more than six and a half years in prison in 2023.
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He was no longer in federal custody as of Monday, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ website. That’s the same day that Trump signed an executive order that granted “full, complete and unconditional” pardons to the rioters and some extremist group members.