Senators, the J6 Prison Choir Were All ‘Political Prisoners’

February 6, 2025 by Jack Cashill

Sen. Richard Blumenthal thought he was landing blow after blow on FBI nominee Kash Patel. And from the point of the view of the uninformed, maybe he was. Like his colleagues Adam Schiff and Mazie Hirono, Blumenthal was sure he had Patel on the ropes

For those who knew better, however, Blumenthal’s performance was just another act in the long-running show trials spawned by the events of January 6, 2021. If Blumenthal was indicting anyone, he was indicting the DoJ operatives who put hundreds of January 6 protestors in prison and the soulless Democrats who applauded them.

What stirred the ham in Blumenthal was Patel’s promotion of a song sung by the J6 prison choir. Blumenthal quoted Patel as saying the song was recorded “to raise awareness and support for the political prisoners still locked in jail.”

“You called them political prisoners?” Blumenthal asked in squeaky high dudgeon. “Julian Khater? You know what he did?” When Patel claimed not to know Khater, Blumenthal shot back indignantly, “He’s the one who sprayed U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick with pepper spray.” After a slight pause to shift emotional gears, Blumenthal lamented, “Officer Sicknick died the next day.”

As if to prove Khater’s culpability for Sicknick’s death, Blumenthal continued, “Khater admitted his violence. He pleaded guilty to assaulting political officers… uh…. a political officer… uh… a police officer.” Blumenthal then cited three other choir members -- Ryan Nichols, Jordan Mink, and James McGrew -- who also pleaded guilty to assault charges.

Blumenthal listed the charges against these men -- “pushed the crowd against officers,” “sprayed with pepper spray,” “pushed a handrail against officers.” What he did not list, however, were their sentences: Jordan Mink 51 months, Ryan Nichols 63 months, James McGrew 78 months, Julian Khater 80 months.

Nor did Blumenthal mention the reason why these men accepted such outrageous sentences. The alternative, a jury trial, promised a much graver outcome. As everyone knew, a D.C. jury had yet to acquit a single J6er. This was not surprising. Some 95 percent of D.C. residents voted against Donald Trump, and no J6er was allowed a change of venue.

To further poison the jury pool, the media lied relentlessly about the events of January 6, beginning with the nonsense that the riot was an “insurrection” and culminating in the ghoulish lie that the riot cost five police officers their lives.

If D.C. courts had been tough on all rioters, Patel’s “political prisoner” claim would have had no merit, but they were demonstrably not. As previously documented in American Thinker, the sentences handed down to the J6ers were dramatically more severe than the D.C. wrist slaps applied to the violent and destructive Disrupt J20 rioters of 2017 or the post-George Floyd vandals of spring 2020.

Hirono focused on the prisoners’ admission of guilt as well. “One of the choir members is Julian Khater, who pled guilty -- he pled guilty -- to assaulting officers with a deadly weapon,” said Hirono. After linking Khater to Sicknick’s death, Hirono asked, “Mr. Patel, was Mr. Khater protesting for election integrity? Yes, or no?”

In his study of Soviet-bloc show trials, the late British historian Tony Judt explained the rationale of the coerced guilty plea: “The accused were reduced from presumptive political critics or opponents to a gaggle of unprincipled conspirators, their purposes venal and traitorous.” From the Democrat perspective, Khater could not have been protesting for election integrity. No, armed with his deadly pepper spray, this traitor admittedly came to D.C. to hurt cops and disrupt the government.

From day two, Sicknick’s death was central to Democrat strategy. Needing a martyr of their own to offset the January 6 shooting death of protestor Ashli Babbitt, someone in authority -- the New York Times would cite “two law enforcement officials” -- made the twisted decision to have Sicknick “murdered.”

On January 8, in an article headlined, “He Dreamed of Being a Police Officer, Then Was Killed by a Pro-Trump Mob,” the New York Times told its readers that rioters struck Sicknick with a fire extinguisher and added this chillingly fraudulent detail: “With a bloody gash in his head, Mr. Sicknick was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support.”

In its subhead, the Times noted that Sicknick’s death “amplified the tragedy.” Did it ever. “This horrifying story about a pro-Trump mob beating a police officer to death was repeated over and over, by multiple journalists on television, in print, and on social media,” said independent journalist Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald called this counterfeit murder “the single most-emphasized and known story of the event.” To dramatize the story, Sicknick’s ashes were displayed in the Rotunda of the Capitol and buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

On January 8, the same day the nation was reacting in horror to the details of the officer’s murder, the D.C. medical examiner performed an autopsy on Sicknick. In a later interview with the Washington Post, Dr. Francisco Diaz called Sicknick’s a “natural death,” meaning “a disease alone causes death.” According to Diaz, Sicknick suffered no internal or external injuries,” nor, importantly, “any allergic reaction to a chemical substance.”

There was no fire extinguisher. No bloody gash. No rush to the hospital. Sicknick suffered two strokes at the base of his brain stem caused by a blood clot. He died not on January 6, but on January 7.

Diaz’s boss, the soon-to-retire Dr. Roger Mitchell, also served as deputy mayor of Washington. I can only speculate here, but he must have communicated this unwelcome news to the Democrat powers that be. In any case, someone decided to suppress the autopsy results. They would not be released until forced out by a Judicial Watch lawsuit on April 19, 2021.

This news stunned the media. On April 20, CNN reporter Jen Christensen emailed Diaz, naively wondering “how someone could die of natural causes after a traumatic event.” On that same day, Sarah Mimms of BuzzFeed emailed him, “I’m really pressing on clarity here not only because of the importance of this case but also because USCP [US Capitol Police] and the Justice Department initially said that Officer Sicknick died due to injuries he sustained at the Capitol.”

The FBI arrested Khater on March 14, 2021. Although the media remained in the dark, the DoJ apparently knew how Sicknick died. To paper over the difference, the DoJ charged him with “conspiring to injure U.S. Capitol Police Officer B. Sicknick, U.S. Capitol Police Officer, and Metropolitan Police Officer D. Chapman.” That alleged weapon was not a fire extinguisher, but a can of over-the-counter pepper spray. Police use such sprays themselves precisely they are not deadly or dangerous.

According to charging documents, Khater allegedly told friend George Tanios, "They just f***ing sprayed me." He is then "seen holding a white can with a black top that appears to be a can of chemical spray.” According to the documents, Khater was standing "five to eight feet away from the officers.”

Khater was indicted on March 17, 2021, a full month before Sicknick’s autopsy results were forced into the public sphere. Knowing the fire extinguisher story was a hoax, prosecutors still wanted to sustain the martyrdom narrative. So they settled on pepper spray. Knowing pepper spray did not kill Sicknick, they did not charge Khater with murder or manslaughter, but they knew a complicit media would finesse the distinction when the truth came out.

The Democrats grilling Patel followed the script. “He’s the one who sprayed U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick with pepper spray,” said Blumenthal of Khater. “Officer Sicknick died the next day.” Hundreds of people were doused with chemicals on January 6, most of them protestors. Only one of them died. For the Democrats that was enough to keep the show going, justice be damned.

Jack Cashill’s newest book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, is available in all formats.