By Aaron Miller-
The partner of a US Capitol Police officer who died a day after the 6 January 2021 riot has sued Donald Trump for wrongful death.
The $1om lawsuit filed on Thursday accuses Mr Trump of intentionally riling up the crowd that attacked Brian Sicknick and of violating Mr Sicknick’s civil rights, assault and negligence, and is seeking $10m in damages.
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”Many participants in the attack have since revealed that they were acting on what they believed to be Defendant Trump’s direct orders in service of their country,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit also accuses Mr Trump of violating Mr Sicknick’s civil rights, assault and negligence, and is seeking $10m in damages.
The suit added that Trump’s campaign of lies and incendiary rhetoric” about the 2020 presidential election motivated the mob, and played a “significant role in the medical condition” that killed the officer.
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Officer Sicknick died the day after the attack, but the Washington medical examiner ruled that it was from natural causes — multiple strokes that occurred hours after the mob confrontation — and prosecutors shied away from linking his death to the assault. But the medical examiner also said that “all that transpired played a role in his condition,” and the Capitol Police consider his death a “line of duty” fatality.
The lawsuit, filed in Washington DC federal court, names Trump and two other January 6 rioters who attacked Sicknick, and demands millions in damages. It was brought by Sicknick’s longtime partner, Sandra Garza, a day before the insurrection’s second anniversary.
Garza alleges that Trump’s months-long refusal to recognize Joe Biden’s win spurred violence that proved fatal to Sicknick. “Many participants in the attack have since revealed that they were acting on what they believed to be Defendant Trump’s direct orders in service of their country,” the lawsuit states.
It added that Trump’s speech hours before the riot, urging people to “fight like hell”, was “the culmination of a coordinated effort to subvert the certification vote”.
“Trump directly incited the violence at the Capitol that followed and then watched approvingly as the building was overrun,” the lawsuit states. “Trump did all these things solely in his personal capacity for his own personal benefit and/or his own partisan aims.”
Brian Sicknick Image: Courtesy Scknick family
Mr Trump has not yet commented on the lawsuit.
Last month, the US House committee probing the 6 January attack asked federal prosecutors to charge Mr Trump with obstruction and insurrection – marking the first time in US history that Congress referred a former president to be criminally prosecuted.
Police increased security on Capitol grounds on the second anniversary of the riots as federal police continue their search for more than 300 people who committed violent acts that day and have not yet been captured.
Among them is a person responsible for planting pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national committees the night before the riots.
On Wednesday, the FBI offered $500,000 (£420,730) to anyone with information that can help them catch the suspect.
The US Capitol riot erupted two years ago as Congress certified President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.
The mob stormed the Capitol following a speech from Mr Trump, who incited them at a rally one mile from the Capitol grounds, imploring them to fight or they won’t have a country any more.
In his speech, Mr Trump claimed election fraud and called on then-Vice-President Mike Pence to overturn the results. telling the crowd that Mike Pence lacked the courage to do the right thing.
“We’re going to walk down to the Capitol,” Mr Trump said in the speech. “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
In the same speech he also told them to “peacefully and patriotically make their voices heard”.
During a commemoration event on Thursday at the White House, Mr Biden called the events of 6 January an “inflection point” of US history.
“It’s hard to believe that this could happen right here in America,” he said.
“January 6 is a reminder that there is nothing guaranteed about our democracy,” Mr Biden added.
One woman was fatally shot during the riots by a police officer. Three others who were on Capitol grounds that day died from natural causes.
On Thursday, Mr Biden awarded several presidential citizen’s medals to officers who responded to the 6 January riots, including a posthumous medal for Mr Sicknick, saying he “lost his life after protecting the citadel of democracy.”
On Friday, a New York state judge denied motions from former President Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump to dismiss the New York attorney general’s $250 million lawsuit, finding some of the arguments “frivolous.”
Judge Arthur Engoron who last year rejected several of the Trumps’ legal arguments when he imposed a monitor on the Trump Organization last year, ruled against Trumps’ argument, branding them “frivolous.”
“Reading these arguments was, to quote the baseball sage Lawrence Peter (‘Yogi’) Berra, ‘Déjà vu all over again,’” the judge wrote.
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