The “enraged” longtime partner of fallen Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick said Sunday that former President Donald Trump’s latest defense of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists was “despicable.”
In a statement Thursday, Trump said, “Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election.”
“In the end, however, JUSTICE WILL PREVAIL!” Trump added.
He issued the statement ahead of Saturday’s poorly attended rally near the Capitol, which characterized those arrested in the riot as “political prisoners.”
“When I heard that, I was enraged,” Sicknick’s partner, Sandra Garza, said of Trump’s comments.
“He knows that’s an outright lie, that the election was not rigged, that’s number one. He is asking for violence again by doing that,” she told CNN. “To say that these people that stormed the Capitol are persecuted is absolutely ridiculous.”
“For him to say that his hearts – our hearts and minds are with these people — this violent mob — is just despicable. It’s despicable. Where was his heart and mind when my partner, Brian Sicknick, was dead?” she said.
Sicknick suffered two strokes after he was confronted by rioters at the Capitol and sprayed in the face with a powerful chemical irritant. The District of Columbia medical examiner ruled that his death the following day, however, was due to natural causes. But the medical examiner also determined that “all that transpired” on Jan. 6 “played a role in his condition.”
At least four law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol building and grounds in January have died by suicide since the insurrection.
Garza said the people who stormed the Capitol chose to do so, and some engaged in “sadistic violence,” hurting officers so “brutally” that some have been left with lifelong trauma and injury.
Garza said she hasn’t heard a single word from Trump, despite the death of her partner. She said she’s willing to meet with him because she wants “answers.” The Sicknick family “deserves answers,” she said.
“I said he was too chicken, I still stand by that.” Garza said of the former president. Trump is “the biggest wuss there is.”
Check out Garza’s full interview in the video clip up top.