Democrats are inflating the Capitol riot body count. Again.
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said this week the Jan. 6 attack on Congress left “almost 10 dead.”
For the record, exactly one person, a Trump supporter killed by police, died that day either during or as a direct result of the assault on the Capitol building.
It’s unclear how Ocasio-Cortez arrived at the number 10. Her office did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
“Any member of Congress who helped plot a terrorist attack on our nation’s capitol must be expelled,” the congresswoman tweeted.
She added, “This was a terror attack. 138 injured, almost 10 dead. Those responsible remain a danger to our democracy, our country, and human life in the vicinity of our Capitol and beyond.”
Ocasio-Cortez’s remarks come not too long after Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who heads the committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, said the riot claimed seven lives.
His remarks represented a revision of the earlier estimate of five fatalities, which was already a revision of the earlier estimate of four.
This is all rather confusing, considering five is the often-agreed-to number of deaths caused by the riot.
About that: Of the five deaths commonly associated with the attack on the Capitol, only one (the police shooting death of 35-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran and Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt) was directly caused by the riot. No other deaths occurred during the attack. No one succumbed later to injuries sustained during the assault, either.
Trump supporters Benjamin Phillips and Kevin Greeson, whose deaths were initially blamed on the riot, died of natural causes, a medical examiner ruled in April. Trump supporter Rosanne Boyland, whom initial reports claimed was crushed to death by the pro-Trump mob, died of a drug overdose.
Then, there’s Capitol Hill Police Officer Brian Sicknick, whose death was originally attributed to “injuries suffered during the riot.” Except that proved to be untrue. He suffered two strokes after the protest and died of natural causes, according to Francisco Diaz, the chief medical examiner in Washington, D.C. There is no evidence Sicknick suffered internal or external injuries from the incident, Diaz said.
Two police officers also committed suicide after the Jan. 6 attack.
Adding the two suicides to the original five deaths is likely how Rep. Thompson gets to his number seven. One can argue those two suicides ought to be included in the total figure of those killed by the riot. The families of the fallen officers maintain the attack on the Capitol was the thing that pushed the men over the edge. However, it is dubious to add Phillips, Greeson, Boyland, and Sicknick to the overall total.
All that aside, it’s still unclear how Ocasio-Cortez gets the number 10.
Are we just making up the numbers now?
This is starting to feel like the part in the Manchurian Candidate when Sen. John Iselin keeps restating the number of “card-carrying members of the Communist party in the Department of Defense” because he can’t remember his made-up figure. He claims first there are 207 members of the Communist Party in the U.S. Department of Defense, then 207, then 104, and then 275. He settles eventually on the number 57 after getting a jolt of inspiration from a bottle of Heinz ketchup.
Likewise, we’ve been told the Jan. 6 riot killed four people. We were then told it killed five, then seven, and now “almost 10.”
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The riot is appalling enough as-is. There is no need to embellish or get cute with the facts.
