Mainstream outlets reported than an officer had been bludgeoned to death while right-wing writers have argued Ashli Babbitt was ‘executed.’
The Capitol riot a year ago was met with horrified eyes across the country and political spectrum. The images of smoke surrounding the seat of the federal government’s supreme branch were more than enough to compel an emotional reaction to the chaos of that day.
But while reasonable people agree that the riot was despicable, much of the coverage that emerged in the haze of those initial emotional days was misleading. And the inaccuracies continued for weeks and months as the fog of that day dissipated.
Most notable among the mistruths is the purported story of Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick’s passing on January 7. While myriad outlets parroted the claim that Sicknick had been beaten to death by the mob, it later became clear that his cause of death was a stroke, not the still-vile attacks on his person during the riot. Indeed, the New York Times initially reported on Sicknick’s death by claiming that rioters “struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher” and that “with a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support. He died on Thursday evening.”
Medical examiners, however, found no evidence that Sicknick had suffered from any blunt force trauma. Instead, they discovered he had died after a blood clot formed in his brain, causing a stroke. Sicknick was among the officers who were pepper-sprayed while fighting back the mob, but the medical examiner declared that he had died of natural causes.
More misinformation came in the form of reports that one rioter caught on camera, Eric Munchel, had brought zip ties inside the Capitol with the intention of using them to take hostages.
Slate used a picture of Munchel to refer to “the zip tie guys,” and proceeded to describe Munchel as part of a group of “guys who, when the windows of the Capitol were broken and entry secured, went in first with what I’d call military-ish precision. They moved with purpose, to the offices of major figures like Nancy Pelosi and then to the Senate floor. What was that purpose? It wasn’t to pose for photos. It was to use those flex cuffs on someone.”
However, as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, even Munchel’s prosecutors have acknowledged that he had come across the zip ties inside the building and taken them so as to prevent Capitol police from using them. Video evidence later confirmed this. That’s hardly an honorable purpose, but certainly not as ominous as that which was attributed to him by Slate and the New York Times, which has yet to correct an article stating that the FBI had arrested “two men who had carried plastic restraints into the Capitol.”
Some right-wing figures eager to distance themselves from the riot also made factual errors in reporting on it. Congressman Matt Gaetz shouted on the House floor on the evening of January 6 that the mob was composed largely of “members of the violent terrorist group antifa.” Texas attorney general Ken Paxton tweeted “these are not Trump supporters” while the riot was still playing out.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham began her monologue on January 6 by speculating that “they were likely not all Trump supporters and there are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have sprinkled throughout the crowd.” To her credit, Ingraham was animated in her condemnation of the riot and did share an article the next day debunking the claim, but the myth did prove to have significant staying power.
In a November interview with Ingraham’s colleague Sean Hannity, Trump submitted that “if you look at what happened at the Capitol — you had some bad people that were not patriots at all. And they came from other places including Antifa and including others, and they led a lot of people astray.”
Similarly, Tucker Carlson has come out with a documentary in which one commentator baselessly speculates that the Capitol riot may have been a “false flag” event carried out by authorities in order to justify the persecution of Trump supporters. Carlson’s theory rests upon the assertion that federal agents were present among the crowd, and were actively trying to incite the attack on the Capitol. While federal agents embedded with these groups may have been interspersed through the crowd, little evidence supports the idea that federal agents were significant, much less integral to encouraging the riot itself.
The theory’s most passionate advocates suggest that those identified as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in court documents are likely government agents, but that term cannot be used as a descriptor for such actors and is typically applied to individuals who assist with the investigation and are therefore not charged.
Trump has also held up Ashli Babbitt as a martyr and argued that her fatal shooting at the hands of Capitol police was completely unjustified. Babbitt, a 35 year-old Trump supporter, ignored orders to stay back and instead tried to climb through a broken door pane into the Capitol rotunda. She was shot by an officer who was standing just a few feet away, protecting a corridor that, if breached, would have allowed rioters to gain access to lawmakers. In a video message delivered by the former president at an event commemorating what would have been Babbitt’s 36th birthday, Trump argued that “there was no reason Ashli should’ve lost her life that day,” before stating that “we must all demand justice for Ashli and her family, so on this solemn occasion as we celebrate her life, we renew our call for a fair and nonpartisan investigation into the death of Ashli Babbitt.”
A Department of Justice investigation determined that the officer who fired on her as she refused to comply with orders was within his rights to fire in defense of himself and the lawmakers in the building. Republican congressman Mark Wayne Mullin, an eyewitness to the shooting, has defended the officer in question, insisting that he “didn’t have a choice.”
Nevertheless, writers such as American Greatness’s Julie Kelly have continued to refer to the “execution” of Ashli Babbitt.