Two men were charged with assaulting U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick and two other officers with an unknown chemical spray as they attempted to break through a bike rack barrier on Capitol grounds, although the men were not charged with murdering Sicknick, whose cause of death has not been publicly released.
Julian Elie Khater and George Pierre Tanios were charged with a host of crimes related to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, including three charges of assault on a federal officer with a dangerous weapon, conspiracy to injure an officer, civil disorder, obstructing or impeding an official proceeding, physical violence on restricted grounds, violent entry and disorderly conduct, and aiding and abetting.
“In reviewing surveillance footage of this incident, your affiant observed the defendants, Julian Elie Khater and George Pierre Tanios, working together to assault law enforcement officers with an unknown chemical substance by spraying officers directly in the face and eyes,” a criminal affidavit by an FBI special agent contended. “Your affiant further observed these defendants appeared to time the deployment of chemical substances to coincide with other rioters’ efforts to forcibly remove the bike rack barriers that were preventing the rioters from moving closer to the Capitol building.”
The Justice Department confirmed with the Washington Examiner that the two men are in custody. Khater was arrested getting off of a plane at Newark Airport in New Jersey, while Tanios was arrested at his home in West Virginia.
The Capitol Police announced that Sicknick, a 42-year-old who joined the agency in 2008, died around 9:30 p.m. on Jan. 7, one day after rioters broke into the Capitol as lawmakers counted electoral votes to affirm President Biden’s victory over former President Donald Trump.
“Officer Sicknick was responding to the riots on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol and was injured while physically engaging with protesters. He returned to his division office and collapsed. He was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries,” the Capitol Police said in a statement in January, adding that Sicknick’s death would be investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department, Capitol Police, and federal partners.
The FBI special agent said in the new court documents that law enforcement found open-source media video of the incident, where Khater is seen making his way to Tanios and says, “Give me that bear s—,” before reaching into Tanios’s backpack. Tanios replies, “Hold on, hold on, not yet, not yet … it’s still early.” But Khater tells Tanios that “they just f—ing sprayed me” and can then be seen holding the can of chemical spray. The investigators said that this “reveals that the two were working in concert and had a plan to use the toxic spray against law enforcement.”
The criminal affidavit then says that Khater walked through the crowd around 2:20 p.m. to within a few steps of the bike rack barrier near the Capitol that was being guarded by law enforcement officers, including Sicknick, Capitol Police officer C. Edwards, and Metropolitan Police Department officer D. Chapman, who was wearing a body-worn camera. Chapman’s video showed that at 2:23 p.m., the rioters began pulling on the bike rack, using ropes and their hands to pull the rack away. Khater can be seen seconds later with his right arm raised, holding the spray and aiming it at the officers from 5 feet or so away.
The criminal complaint stated that Sicknick, Edwards, and Chapman all reacted, one by one, to being hit in the face by the spray, and the video shows the officers “immediately retreat from the line, bring their hands to their faces and rush to find water to wash out their eyes.” Khater continued to spray the chemical at the officers as they moved back.
Tanios and Khater both had separate initial virtual court appearances Monday afternoon. Both men were ordered to be kept in federal custody for now.
Tanios, who is represented by a public defender, appeared from jail on Zoom, wearing an orange jumpsuit and a mask. Magistrate Judge Michael Aloi of the Northern District of West Virginia, who appeared to be holding the hearing from his chambers, scheduled a follow-up hearing for Thursday morning and remanded Tanios to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service pending further proceedings.
Khater, who retained attorney Steven Altman to represent him, also used Zoom to call in from jail, where he wore a yellow shirt. His lawyer consented to detention pending a bail hearing and urged Magistrate Judge Leda Wettre of the U.S. District Court of New Jersey, who appeared with a virtual courtroom background behind her, to transfer his client to Washington, D.C., as quickly as possible. Assistant U.S. Attorney Olta Bejleri said she did not anticipate any delays in the transfer at this time. Khater’s lawyer also tried to enter in a “not guilty” plea, which the magistrate judge said should wait until arraignment.
Khater’s LinkedIn page states that from January 2019 until May 2020, he managed Frutta Bowls, a smoothie bowl restaurant, at a location in State College, Pennsylvania. Tanios’s LinkedIn had listed him as the president of Sandwich University in Morgantown, West Virginia, and Tanios was pictured wearing his “Sandwich U” sweatshirt at the Capitol riot.
The FBI special agent said that “Sicknick, Edwards, and Chapman suffered injuries as a result of being sprayed in the face with an unknown substance by Khater” and that they were “temporary blinded by the substance, were temporary disabled from performing their duties, and needed medical attention and assistance from fellow officers.” The complaint added that “all three officers were incapacitated and unable to perform their duties for at least 20 minutes or longer while they recovered from the spray” and that Edwards reported lasting injuries underneath her eyes, including scabbing that remained on her face for weeks. Edwards and Chapman “also described the spray to their face as a substance as strong as, if not stronger than, any version of pepper spray they had been exposed to during their training as law enforcement officers” and Sicknick “reported to his supervisors and colleagues that he had been sprayed in the face with a substance.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray declined to provide details related to the Sicknick investigation when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in early March.
“There is an ongoing investigation into his death. I have to be careful at this stage, because it’s ongoing, not to get out in front of it,” Wray said. “But I certainly understand and respect and appreciate the keen interest in what happened to him. After all, he was here protecting all of you, and as soon as there is information that we can appropriately share, we want to be able to do that.”
Wray added, “We’re not at a point where we can disclose or confirm a cause of death.”
Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and Trump supporter, was also shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer while allegedly attempting to climb through a window into the Speaker’s Lobby. Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin said that “specialized teams” were investigating the deaths of Sicknick and Babbitt during a Jan. 26 press conference.
In February, the New York Times quietly updated a month-old report about the siege of Congress that perpetuated the idea that Sicknick might have died after being struck by a fire extinguisher.
Now affixed to the top of the report, headlined “Capitol Police Officer Dies From Injuries in Pro-Trump Rampage,” is an update. “New information has emerged regarding the death of the Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick that questions the initial cause of his death provided by officials close to the Capitol Police,” it states in italic letters. A Democratic pretrial impeachment memo cited the New York Times’s reporting, saying, “The insurrectionists killed a Capitol Police officer by striking him in the head with a fire extinguisher.”
Sicknick’s eldest brother, Ken Sicknick, told ProPublica last month that Brian Sicknick had texted the family hours after the siege to say he was pepper-sprayed but doing OK.
“He texted me last night and said, ‘I got pepper-sprayed twice,’ and he was in good shape,” Ken Sicknick recounted. “Apparently, he collapsed in the Capitol, and they resuscitated him using CPR.” He went on to blame the “political climate” for getting his brother killed.
“Many details regarding Wednesday’s events and the direct causes of Brian’s injuries remain unknown, and our family asks the public and the press to respect our wishes in not making Brian’s passing a political issue,” Ken Sicknick told Fox News a couple of days after his brother’s death. Sicknick’s mother, Gladys, said in February that she is still waiting to hear more about her son’s death. She told the Daily Mail she thinks he might have suffered a stroke.
Sicknick received the rare tribute of lying in honor in the Capitol rotunda, where his casket was visited by Biden, and Sicknick’s cremated remains were sent to Arlington National Cemetery.
Former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said the day after Sicknick’s death that the officer “succumbed last night to the injuries he suffered defending the U.S. Capitol against the violent mob who stormed it.” He added that the Justice Department “will spare no resources in investigating and holding accountable those responsible.”
