Tuesday marks the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building, which attempted to overthrow a free and fair election.
In 2021, President Trump urged his followers to stop what he falsely called a “steal” of the 2020 election, which former President Joe Biden won.
Many took him literally and descended on the Capitol, armed with flagpoles, pipes, pepper spray, batons and shields. Rioters beat Capitol and Washington, D.C., police officers protecting lawmakers inside the building.
Five officers died after that day, four by suicide.
U.S. Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick collapsed after being pepper-sprayed at close range twice and died the next day. His brother, Craig Sicknick, spoke to Here & Now’s Robin Young.
10 questions with Craig Sicknick
How are you?
“I’m mad as hell. And I have been for five years now.”
Some listeners might remember in 2022, 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.
“The incident at the Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony where my family just refused to shake hands with [Sen. Mitch] McConnell and [Rep. Kevin] McCarthy, 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.’”
After your brother died, you, your other brother Ken and your parents drove back to New Jersey. And in that ride, you realized that a relative with you was a conspiracy theorist.
“I thought I was fairly close to them up to that point, although that person was prone to listening to QAnon and other conspiracy theory sites. They swore up and down that, first of all, my brother wasn’t dead. They 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. Later I had several emails, death threats, which I actually had to forward to various people. It’s terrible when you lose your kid brother, and I’m getting threats because I’m trying to speak out against the cause of my brother’s death.
“Yeah, he died a hero. But at what cost? And then it seems like he died in vain.
“Going by what’s going on now, 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.
“There is some kind of ceremony to honor those that fell today. 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.”
Trump 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. How do you handle that?
“Well, it was that I 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 work for an oil refinery. You lifted heavy things.
“I don’t do that anymore. I 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.”
There was another insult to your family’s injury and loss. The medical coroner came out and said that your brother had died from natural causes. Later, it was amended to say his death had 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 on to 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. Our family, we saw something we wish we never saw, the Jan. 6 committee hearings. We saw the videos of that day. We saw my brother after he was sprayed. How anybody can deny that that day was an absolutely horrible mayhem is unreal.
“I actually watched the two men who pepper-sprayed my brother in court. Apparently, one didn’t actively spray him, but he was carrying some of the equipment and handed her 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. But 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 sign the blanket pardon for everybody that was there.”
You’re the big brother. When you were 10, your mom and dad brought him home. What 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 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.
“And watching the procession of what must have been thousands of officers from all different law enforcement, after he died, they 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.
My parents have 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 us all busy, but she’s definitely aged also. Now they are, you know, frail, old people.
“I’m surprised how many people don’t know about the insurrection. I’m not surprised they didn’t know my brother passed away. Ashli Babbit was, of course, the right-wing hero, even though she was a criminal breaking into a building.
“So my brother’s memory gets shunted aside and fading and, OK so we take national heroes and we fade them from existence, and then we put criminals up as national heroes, you know?”
I guess Jan. 6 is just not a good day in the Sicknick home.
“You know, all 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.”
Are you okay?
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I become numb to a lot of it unless I have time to think about it too much. 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. Thank you. The story has to be out there. If it was up to the Trumpers, my brother, what he did, would be completely in vain. It would be erased from history.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Karyn Miller-Medzon produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Robin Young. Young adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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