Why no one gets the January 6 body count right

Four years after the events, you would expect someone of consequence to provide an accurate count of those killed on Jan. 6, 2021.

This is a simple calculation. January 6 was not, as The View’s Sunny Hostin” insists, “like the Holocaust.” The deaths on January 6 can literally be counted on one hand, not in the millions, but still no one gets it right.

Certainly not Attorney General Merrick Garland. “On this day, four years ago, police officers were brutally assaulted while bravely defending the United States Capitol.” Garland began. “They were punched, tackled, tased, and attacked with chemical agents that burned their eyes and skin.”

Unwittingly, the New York Times put the nature of those injuries in perspective in a February 2021 article on January 6’s “Scope of Violence.”

The reporters began the article by listing the injuries suffered that day by the police. At the very top of the list? “One officer lost the tip of his right index finger.” A lost fingertip? No, not exactly the Holocaust.

And this injury may have been the result of friendly fire. In justifying the shooting of Ashli Babbitt – and more on that soon enough – the Justice Department explained the communications that shooter Lt. Michael Byrd was processing.

“There were shouts of officers down. Screams from his colleagues under attack by rioters with chemical agents. A report that an officer’s fingertips were blown off.”

Blown off? The only ones carrying munitions that day were the police, and they had a near monopoly on chemical agents.

At 1:06 p.m., while Rep. Paul Gosar was challenging the certification of the Arizona vote, Capitol Police Deputy Chief Eric Waldow ordered his people to open fire on the protesters now numbering about a thousand and still peaceful.

“That was a shooting gallery out there,” said Stan Kephart, the Epoch Times use-of-force expert. “There was no tactical reason for it at all.”

About 10 minutes earlier, 50-year-old Trump supporter Benjamin Phillips collapsed and would soon die of natural causes. Phillips’ was the first death that day and the only one for which the police were blameless.

The police do bear responsibility for the second death. At 1:28, 56-year old father of five Kevin Greeson collapsed after a Capitol Police flash bang exploded nearby. Greeson would soon die of cardiac arrest.

On Jan. 7, 2024, Garland gave these deaths no thought. “Today,” he said, “I am thinking of the officers who still bear the scars of that day as well as the loved ones of the five officers who lost their lives in the line of duty as a result of what happened to them on January 6, 2021.”

Five officers? Speaking of the Holocaust, this is a lie that would embarrass Josef Goebbels. The actual count was zero.

On Jan. 7, 2021, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died after suffering a pair of strokes, unrelated to the events of January 6. Someone in authority – the New York Times would cite “two law enforcement officials” – made the conscious decision to have Sicknick “murdered.”

On Jan. 8, the Times told its readers that “pro-Trump rioters” struck Sicknick with a fire extinguisher. The Times added this chillingly fraudulent detail: “With a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support.”

To sell this hoax, the House leadership honored Sicknick with a public memorial in the Rotunda of the Capitol and buried his autopsy report for more than a hundred days until forced out by Judicial Watch.

In the 200 days following January 6, four officers committed suicide. Instead of exploring why they might have done so, Garland simply added them to the day’s body count.

In the trials of the J6ers, judges or prosecutors would routinely repeat the saga of the five faux martyrs to provoke the jurors.

At 2:43 p.m., Lt. Michael Byrd shot and killed unarmed 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt.

Said Kephart, “Ashli Babbitt was murdered. She was shot and killed under the color of authority by an officer who violated not only the law but his oath.” He considered the shooting “an arrestable offense.”

The Left has a reason to lie. Cowed by the Left, the Right made little effort to correct the record.

“The only one who was killed [on January 6] was a beautiful young lady named Ashli Babbitt,” said President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday.

In fact, Ashli’s was the third death and the second person “killed.”

The third and most brutal killing – and the fourth and final death – occurred nearly two hours later. Rosanne Boyland, 34, got caught in a crowd and swept into a tunnel entrance.

Although numerous doors and windows had been opened for hours, the DC Metro Police guarded the tunnel as though it were the Alamo.

When the police made a concerted surge to drive back the protesters – what protester Kim Sorgente called “a synchronized chemical attack, then a charge” – the protesters tumbled backwards.

The chemical irritant displaced the oxygen in the tunnel, causing Boyland to collapse at the tunnel entrance.

Ignoring the screams of the protesters, the police kept pushing more and more people on top of her. Once the other protesters were pulled off the pile, Boyland lay momentarily lifeless and exposed at the tunnel entrance.

For no good reason, MPD policewoman Lila Morris picked up a tree branch, raised it up with both hands, and swung wildly. Morris struck Rosanne over the head at least three times before the branch snapped and flew out of her hands. Boyland died soon thereafter.

For her efforts, Morris was sent to the Super Bowl. For his, Byrd was promoted to captain. There is no mystery to either of these killings. Both were captured on video.

In the weeks and months to follow, the truth will out. If I were Merrick Garland, I would start Googling, “countries without extradition treaties.”

To learn more, please see “Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6.”