The girlfriend of fallen Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick says that testimonies from Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner that illustrated their failure to stop Donald Trump from inciting a violent mob on January 6 were “absolutely despicable”.
Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, Sandra Garza explained on Thursday night after the third public hearing of the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot that she was “more moved” by the testimonies she heard from the first prime-time screening, which featured appearances by both Ms Trump and Mr Kushner.
“There were so many people who could’ve intervened and said, you know what, I’m gonna go to the media … I’m gonna scream from the rooftops and try and stop this,” Ms Garza said during her interview on CNN’s The Lead. “They knew Trump intimately. They knew how dangerous he was. And nobody did anything to stop him.”
Ms Garza’s boyfriend, Brian Sicknick, died on 7 January 2021 after suffering two strokes, which medical examiners concluded were the result of natural causes. While protecting the Capitol on 6 January, Sicknick was assaulted by two men with bear mace, though authorities said that the injuries did not hasten his death, ruling out homicide.
The 42-year-old, who Ms Garza pointed out in her interview with Mr Tapper was a self-described Republican who had voted for Trump in 2016, was one of five police officers whose deaths have been linked to the violent attack.
“Families were decimated because of what happened on the sixth. People died because of what happened on the sixth,” the officer’s girlfriend told the CNN host.
When Mr Tapper specifically asked Sicknick’s girlfriend what she thought of the testimonies provided by Ms Trump and Mr Kushner, two of the former president’s closest advisers throughout his tenure in the White House, during the first hearing, Ms Garza didn’t hold back. She singled out “Ivanka in particular”.
“Absolutely despicable,” she said, after reacting in disgust tp Mr Kushner’s testimony, where he’d written off White House advisers threatening to hand in their resignation if the one-term president didn’t halt his campaign to decertify the election as “whining”.
“They basically had a conscience,” she said.
During the ex-president’s daughter’s testimony, she explained how she agreed with former attorney general Bill Barr’s assessment that the 2020 US election was not stolen and was fair.
“I respected AG Barr, and accepted what he was saying,” Ms Trump told the committee in her recorded testimony, an assessment that comes into direct conflict with her own father, who, to this day, continues to publicly push the conspiratorial theory that the 2020 election was stolen.
Mr Tapper then gave Ms Garza a prompt and asked her to speak into one of the cameras and deliver her own message to the pair of former Trump advisors.
“Tell Jared Kushner what you think,” the CNN anchor said to her.
“Jared, Ivanka, yes, it’s hard to stand up to a family member, a father, father-in-law. But you could have done something. You could have avoided the bloodshed that took place, including the suicides that took place after. People died,” Ms Garza said, without looking away from the camera’s lens.
“People died, people are still hurting,” she added, citing Capitol officer Caroline Edwards’ testimony last week where she recounted how she’d “slipped on people’s blood” the day of the attack.
“It was carnage. It was chaos. I can’t even describe what I saw,” Ms Edwards told the panel during the first public prime-time hearing.
The fourth public hearing for the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot has been tentatively scheduled for Tuesday 21 June at 1pm ET.
