'He died in vain': Brother of fallen Capitol officer on rewriting of Jan. 6

0:00Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Mehrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts. Boston. I am mad as hell, and I have been for five years now. Five years after rioters attacked police officers at the U.S. Capitol, the brother of the late police officer Brian Sicknick says he won't let anyone erase his memory.

0:51It's Tuesday, January 6th, and this is Here and Now, anytime from NPR and WBWR. I'm Chris Bentley.

1:01Today on the show, a dispatch from the border of Colombia and Venezuela after the U.S. abduction of Nicolás Maduro. There's an earthquake that happened in the country, and everyone is sort of just waiting for, you know, a bigger aftershock. Also, Democratic Senator Gene Shaheen says it's up to Republicans, who hold the power in Congress, to restrain President Trump as he threatens more countries with war. It's troubling to me that the Republican leadership in Congress has been so reluctant to cross President Trump. But first, today marks five years since an insurrection aimed at overturning a presidential election in the U.S.

1:49In 2020, President Trump urged his followers to stop the steal, falsely claiming that he'd won the election. Many took him literally, and a mob armed with flagpoles, pipes, spare spray, batons, and shields attacked Capitol Police and D.C. police officers, eventually breaking into the Capitol building in pursuit of members of Congress. 140 law enforcement officers were wounded, and several died later. Some would take their own lives. Today, Robin Young has a remembrance of one officer, and I'll let her take it from here. Well, today, President Trump made a long, free-range speech before the GOP members' retreat at the Trump and the Kennedy Center, but only briefly touched on Jan 6, in one case to complain about the reporting of it.

2:38When they say, as an example in my speech, peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol, peacefully and patriotically, do you know that the unselect committee didn't report it, that I said those words? Do you know that the news never reported the words walk or march peacefully and patriotically to the Capitol? Do you know they never reported a scandal? Well, yes, they did. Also today, Enrico Terrio, the Proud Boys leader pardoned along with all the other Jan 6 convicted insurrectionists, called for a march to honor what he called the fallen patriot Ashley Babbitt, who was shot by police when she almost reached an entrance.

3:15But the plaque that was meant to honor the officers who protected lawmakers from the Gen 6 attackers has been mysteriously missing for five years. Five years ago, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick collapsed after being pepper sprayed at close range twice. He was pronounced dead the next day. For his family, this is not a good day. Brian's brother, Craig Sicknick, joins us now. How are you? I am mad as hell, and I have been for five years now. Yeah. Some listeners might remember in 2022, this is after Republicans blocked an investigation into Jan 6, you and your family tried to find a civil way to respond when receiving a posthumous medal for Brian.

3:56The incident at the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony where my family just refused to shake hands with McConnell and McCarthy. They were the Republican leaders. Yes, that went around the world instantaneously when we did that. And that wasn't our intent. It was just to say, hey, you know, we don't respect you. We will not shake your hands. Yeah. Let's explain why. You and your brother Ken and your mom and dad not only had to rush to Washington, D.C. with this incredible news that Brian had collapsed. Start with, as you're driving back, realizing what about one of your relatives? That particular relative I thought I was fairly close to up until that point, although that person was prone to listening to QAnon and other conspiracy theory sites, swore up and down that, first of all, my brother wasn't dead.

4:42They just put him away somewhere for safekeeping and he would be fine in a little while. Claimed that Biden, of course, illegally stole the election. Also claimed that Biden himself was a clone. Yeah. But then you became a target of others who believe falsely the same things. I had several emails, threats which I actually had to forward to various people. It's, you know, terrible when you lose your kid brother. I'm getting threats because I'm trying to speak out against the cause of my brother's death. Yeah. Well, you know, your brother was a hero. Yeah, he died a hero, but at what cost? And then it seems like he died in vain.

5:22going by what's going on now. You told me you've lost your faith. I have very little faith the United States will ever return to anything close to what it once was. And we were never perfect as a nation, but we always tried to move past that and improve. You were asked to be in a forum? Some kind of ceremony to honor those that fell. My mother and brother will be down there. I didn't get the full gist of it because I have no interest in going down to D.C. until Trump is gone. He was calling lawmakers as they were huddled, being protected by people like your brother, and he was calling and still asking them to overturn the election results.

6:00How do you handle that? Well, it was that I've reached the point where I have so little faith in the country that there's a very good chance I will not be retiring in my birth country. I want peace. How has this affected you physically? Because we know you used to, you know, work for an oil refinery. You lifted heavy things. I don't do that anymore. They now have PTSD, among other issues. I decided I didn't want to do that because I couldn't be safe there anymore. I work for a company now that I worked for 30 years ago. That's great. But, you know, you've had ulcers. There was another insult to your family's injury and loss.

6:37The medical coroner came out and said that your brother had died from natural causes. Later, it was amended to say his death did have to do with the attacks. You say you didn't realize you should have hired your own coroner, but because of the coroner's initial response, you have deniers grabbing onto that notion that your brother's death had nothing to do with what we know is a vicious attack on him that day. You had to deal with that. It's unbelievable that so many people were so deeply deceived. What was that like to have how he died denied? I can't imagine you or your parents taking that in.

7:16No, we saw something we wish we never saw at the January 6th committee hearings. We saw the videos of that day. We saw my brother after he was sprayed. It's how anybody can deny that that day was an absolutely horrible mayhem is unreal. Two men pepper sprayed your brother. I actually watched them in court. Apparently one didn't actively spray him, but he was carrying some of the equipment and handed it off to the other one. He was actually smirking and smiling during the hearing, knowing that he was basically going to get off with a slap on the wrist. The other one who actually sprayed him seemed to show some remorse, but, of course, now has a full pardon, even though he killed a cop.

8:02But that doesn't matter anymore, apparently. How did you feel about President Trump pardoning the almost 1 ,500 insurrectionists? That was the day I lost all faith in the country. How can you elect somebody who said he was not going to pardon anybody who showed any violence or attacked any of the officers? And guess what? First thing he did is turn around and just signed a blanket pardon for everybody that was there. No. You say the people who say your brother wasn't a hero, they don't know who he was. You're the big brother, and you remember when you were 10 when your mom and dad brought him home 42 years ago.

8:43What do you want people to know about Brian? He was just a good, solid person. I mean, if you wanted somebody to be a police officer you had to interact with, you wanted it to be somebody like him. professional, caring, always did the right thing. And then he made a whole career out of that between his Air Force career and even when he was a school custodian before that when he was trying to figure out what he wanted to do. Can you find anything? I mean, you write about how when you and your brother Ken and your mom and dad were leaving after he died, officers were lined up everywhere. I was basically numb at that point and watching the procession of, it must have been thousands of officers from all different law enforcement.

9:32They were all lined up and saluting our car as we went by. And it was humbling. That told me there are good people out there. You've told me that you feel you've aged in the five years with your health issues. I went from a full head of hair to bald. The little bit of hair that is left is gray. How are your parents? They've definitely aged dramatically. My father was skiing up until his 80s. Now he doesn't get off the couch all that much. That's sad because he was very active up until my brother died. My mother, she's not sure of how to handle everything anymore like any of us. So she keeps herself busy, but she's definitely aged also.

10:11Now they're frail old people. Yeah. I run into people sometimes. Sometimes I'm surprised how many people don't know about the insurrection. I'm not surprised they didn't know my brother passed away. It was, of course, the right wing Ashley Babitz, the hero, even though she was a criminal breaking into a building. She was a QAnon follower, yeah, who was shot by police as she came close to lawmakers. Yes. So my brother's memory gets shunted aside and fading. OK, so we take national heroes and we fade them from existence and then we put criminals up as national heroes. I guess January 6th is just not a good day in the Sicknick home.

10:52All of us kind of do our own thing. I'll be at work where basically I'm going to be by myself and just dealing me and the machines all day. Craig Sicknick, again his brother Brian Sicknick, collapsed and died after valiantly trying to hold off insurrectionists on January 6th, five years ago. Craig, thank you so much. I just wish you some peace. Okay. Okay. Yeah. You all right? Yeah, I'll be fine. I've become numb to a lot of it, unless I have time to think about it too much. Yeah. But every time you start thinking about it, you get angry. And you have to wonder why this happened, and why wasn't anything done about it.

11:33Just thank you. The story has to be out there. If it was up to the Trumpers, my brother would have died completely in vain and would be erased from history.

11:45Coming up next, Robin speaks with a senator about the American abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the Trump administration's renewed threats against Denmark about seizing Greenland. Stick around.

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12:54undermined a fundamental principle of international law in deposing now former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Is anyone in the Trump administration listening? Last night in an interview with NBC, President Trump once again asserted he is in charge of Venezuela. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. is only directing policy in Venezuela. And now Trump says Greenland is next. Senator Jean Shaheen, Democrat from New Hampshire, ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee and senior member of the Armed Services Committee, is here. Senator Shaheen, you were part of a bipartisan briefing on Venezuela last night.

13:28Did you get any more clarity on what's happening in Venezuela? Well, we got very detailed explanation about the mission itself, about the actions of our military and intel community, which was very helpful. But in terms of what happens next, things were a lot more vague. You've been involved in one or two of these international incidents. Did the lack of clarity shock you? It was disappointing to see that there was very little planning, appeared to be very little planning for what comes next. and a lot of supposition about what was going to happen without any real benchmarks for what we want to see, about a timeline for how do we get to democratic elections, and about what the real goals are in Venezuela.

14:28I think there's still a lot of not just vagueness around those goals, but contradictions around what we're really trying to accomplish there. I think we're better off without Maduro heading Venezuela. I think there's general agreement, bipartisan agreement, that he was a bad guy doing bad things, not just in Venezuela, but creating problems throughout the region and for the United States. But what comes next is still the question. Well, there's pretty unanimous agreement in Washington that he was a bad guy who held on to power despite losing elections. But stay with what you heard in the debriefing.

15:08Everyone has sung the praises of the U.S. military. Put that aside. Do you agree that an extraction at this time with what you're saying is not a plan was a good idea, even if it got rid of a bad guy? What do you think about the U.N. calling it, you know, a violation of international law? Is the U.S. on shaky ground here? Or does nobody care about that anymore? I think members of Congress care about the fact that there was no notification in violation of not just storms, but what is legally expected. What the removal of Maduro has done is create further instability in Venezuela as well as in the region.

15:47You just had to look at the border this morning on the news between Colombia and Venezuela, where they have beefed up the military in Colombia. And the statements that the president is making tend to undermine that, not just in Colombia, but throughout Latin America. the statements around annexing Greenland, not only are a violation of, they would destabilize NATO and violate our transatlantic alliance, but they go against a longstanding historic relationship with Denmark that has been, they've been one of our critical allies. And as the prime minister of Denmark has said, why are we interested in taking over Greenland?

16:33They're willing to partner with us on anything we want to do there. Well, here's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on CNN last night. The United States should have Greenland as part of the United States. There's no need to even think or talk about this in the context of a military operation. Nobody's going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland. Well, the Danish prime minister says any U.S. move on Greenland would mean the end of the NATO alliance. I mean, how seriously are you taking this? Well, I'm not. I think saner heads will prevail. But Stephen Miller doesn't know what he's talking about.

17:06We've seen that time and time again. And why we're listening to him and to anybody who's suggesting that we're going to take Greenland makes no sense. Well, but because he's the deputy chief of staff and he was said to be one of the architects of what we just saw. So is it maybe a mistake not to take him seriously? You can take him seriously. I don't intend to do that. I believe that our transatlantic alliance is more important than Stephen Miller. And how sidelined do you feel? You had people in the House sent home when decision-making was needed. How sidelined do you feel as a member of Congress?

17:44It's troubling to me that the Republican leadership in Congress has been so reluctant to cross President Trump. The fact that I can talk to so many of my colleagues who privately say we don't agree with what the president is doing but are not willing to say so publicly. Gene Shaheen of New Hampshire, the Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Senator Shaheen, thank you so much. Good to talk to you. Thank you.

18:20Worth remembering, as we hear a somewhat defeated-sounding senator there, the American military campaign against Venezuela started back in September with attacks on fishing boats the administration claimed were carrying drugs. It ramped up into a partial naval blockade on oil tankers and a CIA drone strike on a Venezuelan port. In all that time, Congress held four votes, two in the Senate and two in the House, on war powers resolutions, trying to pump the brakes. All of those attempts failed and fell along mostly party lines. Now Democratic Senator Tim Kaine plans to force another vote, possibly this week, that would ostensibly prevent further military action without lawmakers' approval.

19:07But President Trump could veto that. And even if he didn't, the administration has so far argued what it's doing in Venezuela is not a war, but a law enforcement operation. Well, this is far from the first debate about presidential war powers in Latin America. More on that and a dispatch from the Colombian border with Venezuela after the break.

19:41Well, before President Trump deployed the American military in Venezuela without congressional approval, presidents of both parties had bypassed Congress to go to war. Presidential historian Julian Zelizer says unilateral decisions by the president have become normalized. And Trump in Venezuela calls to mind the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. Yeah, this has been an ongoing problem. In December of 1989, President George H.W. Bush launched Operation Just Cause, invaded Panama, took out the dictator, Manuel Noriega, ultimately putting him in jail in the U.S. There were a lot of differences in the operation.

20:23Panama was much smaller. Panama declared war on the U.S. But it was the same critique. There were several legislators at the time, people like Congressman Ron Dellums, who warned that this would set a precedent where presidents simply conducted operations like this without congressional involvement. And it totally unbalanced our constitutional system. And this has been a perennial problem in American politics. So the question is, does the Republican majority support this use of presidential power, regardless of the particulars of Venezuela, or do they oppose it? And as of now, we have not heard serious dissenting voices within the GOP.

21:08That's ultimately what we need to look for. As we follow that news from Washington, we're also keeping an ear to the ground in South America. Robin Young spoke to NPR's aider Peralta, who was in the border town of Cucuta, Colombia. It's busy there, as you'll hear, but he says not too different than the usual so far. You know, there's actually a lot of normal. Lots of buses coming in and out of Venezuela. Lots of taxis coming in and out of Venezuela. But then there's little hints that not everything is okay. The Colombian government has deployed the military along the border. They say that they're doing so just in case there's a flood of migrants that come into Colombia.

21:53So we can see uniformed military officers here and also a few armored vehicles here. But a lot of normal, lots of movement back and forth. Well, but can you help us a little and help listeners a little with the political here? You know, Maduro in Venezuela, a brutal dictator, stole elections, accused of human rights abuses. His vice president, who was sworn in as interim president, is cut from the same cloth. Now, here in the U.S., we're used to looking at things through a very, you know, cut and dry left-right lens. Probably a mistake to do that, but we do. What is the thinking where you are?

22:28I mean, who would be fleeing Venezuela after Maduro's ouster and why? No, I think what we're seeing is a lot of wait and see. I mean, I've been talking to a lot of people, you know, who have been moving, either going back to Venezuela or coming back. And, you know, what they're saying is, in truth, so far, nothing has changed. Of course, you know, Maduro was taken by the United States and he's, you know, in court now in the United States facing charges. But Desi Rodriguez takes over, who was his vice president. And what some people I spoke to said is she's exactly the same as him. And unless the whole government is taken out, then things will change in Venezuela.

23:15I've also spoken to other people here who say we never liked the Maduro government, but we also don't like what the United States has done. One man told me, this is not a Venezuelan problem. This is an oil problem. And he said, and I almost wish that our country didn't have any oil. And what he said is actually a lot of the movement of this border crossing has diminished. And what he says is it's because people, they're scared. They don't know what is going to happen. They don't know if Delcy Rodriguez, the vice president, now the acting president, will remain in power. They don't know if the United States will attack again.

23:59And so he says it's just, there's an eerie quiet, he says, on the other side of the border. Life continues as normal, despite the fact that there's an earthquake that happened in the country. And everyone is sort of just waiting for, you know, a bigger aftershock, I guess we can say. Eder Peralta told us the American abduction of Maduro is seismic, not just for Venezuela, but for the region. And Renata Segura agrees. She's with the International Crisis Group. We asked her about President Trump's threats against Gustavo Petro, the president of Colombia, whom Trump called a sick man. Yes, obviously, the relationship between President Petro and Trump has been very bad from the beginning of the second administration in Washington.

24:47And obviously, there's a lot of concern about the possibility of the U.S. intervening because Colombia does produce a lot of drugs that do reach the U.S. and particularly this animosity against the president. We have to be clear, though, that Venezuela is a fairly different case from Colombia. Colombia is the greatest ally for the United States in terms of security. The military-to-military cooperation is very vast, and a lot of the work that the U.S. does on anti-narcotics is based on Colombian intelligence. And so I don't think it is going to be as easy as it was in Caracas to intervene. Also, Colombia is having presidential elections later this year.

25:31And I think that the likelihood is that the U.S. sees that it will be more effective for them to really interject in the elections in a way similar to what they did with Honduras, being very clearly about who is their favorite candidate and guaranteeing that they have an electoral result that is of their liking rather than do a military intervention. The elections are in May, so we'll have to see what happens between now and May. We've got more analysis from Renata Segura, including what might result from Trump's renewed threats against Mexico, and lots more right now at hereandnow.org.

26:14That's it for us today. Here and Now Anytime comes from NPR and WBUR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Karen Miller-Metzen, Lynn Medigon, Sam Rapelson, Joe Ryan, and Jenna Griffiths. Our editors were Mark Naven, Micaela Rodriguez, and Michael Scotto. Technical direction from Caleb Green and Matt Reed. Our theme music is by Mike Moschetto, Max Liebman, and me, Chris Bentley. Our digital producers are Allison Hagen and Grace Griffin. And Here and Now's executive producer is Alan Price. Thanks for listening. See you on hereandnow.org. And we'll be back with you tomorrow.