Brian Sicknick’s Partner Pens Emotional Column Condemning Trump, GOP Lawmakers for Downplaying Capitol Riots

Sandra Garza, the longtime partner of fallen Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, will never forgive former President Donald Trump for inciting supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Garza wrote an emotional column for CNN, sharing memories of her 11-year relationship with Sicknick before he died in the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection. She also recalled her horrified reaction to learning about Sicknick’s hospitalization, and how it took her weeks before she could watch footage from January 6th because “I had heard so many terrible things about it and didn’t think I could psychologically handle it.”

From the column:

Before his memorial a month later, something came over me: I wanted to see everything I could and understand what happened that day. As I watched the videos, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I saw officers being brutalized and beaten, and protesters defying orders to stay back from entering the Capitol. All the while, I kept thinking, “Where is the President? Why is it taking so long for the National Guard to arrive? Where is the cavalry!?”

Garza recalled that her sadness turned to anger “as I watched Republican members of Congress lie on TV and in remarks to reporters and constituents about what happened that day.” This compelled her to join Sicknick’s mother in a recent effort to pressure Republicans to support the creation of a congressional 1/6 investigative commission.

Garza said that among the Republican senators she spoke to, some “were very pleasant and polite. Others were dismissive, and others could barely hide their disdain.” She promised that she will keep speaking against the lawmakers who voted against the commission, and those who are “denying or downplaying the viciousness and trauma” of the insurrection.

Garza concludes by saying that, like Sicknick, she was once a supporter of Trump’s, but his failure and the failure of others to acknowledge what happened that day is “unforgivable.”

To know that some members of Congress — along with the former President, Donald Trump, who Brian and I once supported but who can only now be viewed as the mastermind of that horrible attack — are not acknowledging Brian’s heroism that day is unforgivable and un-American.