Attorney General Merrick Garland compared the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 to the Capitol riot of Jan. 6 when unveiling the Justice Department’s response to the Biden administration’s new anti-domestic terrorism strategy.
The domestic terrorist truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City carried out by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols wounded hundreds of individuals and killed at least 168 people, including 19 children and babies who had been in the building’s day care center. The D.C. medical examiner determined that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick’s “cause of death” a day after responding to the Jan. 6 riot was a stroke and that his “manner of death” was “natural.” Two others in the crowd died of heart problems, and another died of a drug overdose, and Trump supporter and Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by a yet-unnamed police officer as she attempted to climb through a broken window into the House Speaker’s Lobby.
“At the Justice Department, the deputy attorney general and I have already begun implementing a range of measures. Among other things, we have begun to reinvigorate the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, and we will convene that interagency body in the coming days and months,” Garland said on Tuesday. “Attorney General Janet Reno originally created the executive committee in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The investigation of that bombing, which required an enormous commitment of resources from agencies across the federal and state governments, demonstrated the importance of such a coordination mechanism.”
Garland continued: “Our current effort comes on the heels of another large and heinous attack, this time the Jan. 6 assault on our nation’s capital. We have now, as we had then, an enormous task ahead to move forward as a country, to punish the perpetrators, to do everything possible to prevent similar attacks, and to do so in a manner that affirms the values on which our justice system is founded and upon which our democracy depends. The resolve and dedication with which the Justice Department has approached the investigation of the Jan. 6 attack reflects the seriousness with which we take this assault on a mainstay of our democratic system: the peaceful transfer of power.”
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The remarks by the attorney general followed the unveiling of the Biden’s administration’s new “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” which says it has four “pillars,” or efforts to “understand and share information regarding the full range” of the threat posed by domestic terrorism, efforts to “prevent domestic terrorists from successfully recruiting, inciting, and mobilizing” people to violence, efforts to “deter and disrupt domestic terrorist activity” before it results in violence, and a contention that “long–term issues that contribute to domestic terrorism in our country must be addressed to ensure that this threat diminishes over generations to come.”
Garland made similar comparisons between the Oklahoma City bombing and the Capitol riot during his Senate confirmation hearing in February.
Capitol Police announced Sicknick, 42, died on Jan. 7, one day after rioters broke into the Capitol as lawmakers counted electoral votes to affirm President Joe Biden‘s victory over former President Donald Trump.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, led by Francisco Diaz, told the Washington Examiner in April that Sicknick’s “cause of death” was “acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis” (a stroke), and the “manner of death” was “natural.” The medical examiner said Sicknick was sprayed with a chemical substance at about 2:20 p.m. on Jan. 6, collapsed at the Capitol at about 10 p.m., and was transported by emergency services to a local hospital. He died at about 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 7. Diaz told the Washington Post that Sicknick died after suffering two strokes, did not suffer an allergic reaction to chemical irritants, and bore no evidence of either external or internal injuries, but he contended that “all that transpired played a role in his condition.“
But the medical examiner’s office noted that the term “natural” is “used when a disease alone causes death” and “if death is hastened by an injury, the manner of death is not considered natural.” Julian Khater and George Tanios were charged in March with coordinating to assault Sicknick and two other officers with a chemical spray, but the men were not accused of killing Sicknick and have not been charged in connection with his death.
Garland said Tuesday that “over the 160 days since the attack, we have arrested over 480 individuals and brought hundreds of charges against those who attacked law enforcement officers, obstructed justice, and used deadly and dangerous weapons to those ends.”
A bipartisan Senate report from this month stated that “approximately 140 law enforcement officers reported injuries suffered during the attack.”
The DOJ investigation has often pointed to violence conducted against officers by rioters and has focused on actions taken by members of groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, many of whom it has hit with conspiracy charges. The DOJ announced in April that it would not pursue charges against the officer who fatally shot Babbitt inside the Capitol during the riot, determining there was “insufficient evidence” to support a criminal prosecution.
“We are focused on violence, not on ideology. In America, espousing a hateful ideology is not unlawful. We do not investigate individuals for their First Amendment-protected activities,” Garland said Tuesday.
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A White House fact sheet released earlier Tuesday contended that “we embraced the protection of civil rights and civil liberties as a national security imperative” when putting together the new anti-domestic terrorism strategy and that “the strategy we are releasing today is carefully tailored to address violence and reduce the factors that lead to violence, threaten public safety, and infringe on the free expression of ideas.”
