by Revolver.News
Last week, the New York Times obtained a leaked copy of video footage purporting to show the exact moment Officer Sicknick was allegedly bear sprayed by MAGA protesters.
New videos obtained by The New York Times show publicly for the first time how the U.S. Capitol Police officer who died after facing off with rioters on Jan. 6 was attacked with chemical spray.
The officer, Brian D. Sicknick, who had been guarding the west side of the Capitol, collapsed later that day and died the next night. Little had been known about what happened to Officer Sicknick during the assault, and the previously unpublished videos provide new details about when, where and how he was attacked, as well as about the events leading up to the encounter.
Two rioters, Julian Elie Khater and George Pierre Tanios, were arrested on March 14 and charged with assaulting Officer Sicknick and two other officers with chemical spray. The investigation is continuing, and federal prosecutors haven’t ruled out pursuing murder charges. [New York Times]
If you haven’t seen the videos yet, there’s a good reason why. They’re surprisingly hard to find, unless you’re a paying Times subscriber. Also, given how underwhelming and confusing the actual evidence is, the fact that the clips didn’t exactly go viral is itself an indictment of the Justice Department’s case against Khater and Tanios.
Fortunately, a helpful anon managed to upload the key New York Times clip on YouTube. These are the main 36 seconds around which the entire Sicknick trial will revolve.
The Department of Justice is telling the public that this grainy 360p video is sufficient to justify 60 years in Federal prison for two young men, one of whom is not even accused of using the spray canister at all.
In a previous Revolver exclusive, we detailed the shocking apparent weaknesses of the FBI and DOJ’s claims asserted against George Tanios and Julian Khater, the two defendants charged with assaulting Officer Sicknick.
READ MORE: January 6 Narrative Collapse — Assault Charges Spell Problems for DOJ, FBI in Officer Sicknick Case
Tanios is facing 60 years in prison, which is considerably more time than for typical first degree murder, despite the fact that Tanios not only did not spray Sicknick (it was Khater who allegedly did so), but the criminal complaint does not allege he even entered the U.S. Capitol building that day. At 39 years of age, if Tanios is found guilty on all counts with no leniency at sentencing, he will leave prison at 99 years old. [Revolver]
Then, we noted the astonishing fact that the criminal complaint, while purporting to show still frames from “pinpointed” footage of the assault, had no money shot in which Sicknick was actually struck:
The crux of the prosecution’s case is that they discovered surveillance video footage, plus corroborating officer body cam footage, showing Khater spraying Sicknick and two other officers with chemical spray. But neither the surveillance video nor the body cam footage has been made publicly unavailable.
While the 11-page criminal complaint and the 65-page FBI Special Agent affidavit both refer to the same six screenshots purporting to be video frames from the surveillance and body cam footage, none of the screenshots show the “money shot” where Khater supposedly sprays the officers. [Revolver]
Our conclusion was that the evidence in these videos must be so weak that unlike in the so-called Whitmer Kidnapping Plot, where Federal prosecutors raced to show the public whiz-bang footage of The Bad Guys, we may never see the whole tape of what happened here. After all, it’s reasonable to expect the FBI and DOJ to act craven, corrupt and politically-beholden. Why wouldn’t they maliciously overplay a poor hand to preserve The Narrative?
Like Wiley Coyote running over a cliff and not yet looking down to realize how unmoored his sprint has become from reality, cartoonish speculation continues to support The Narrative in place of actual evidence or a legal allegation from the Justice Department. [Revolver]
To put it in meme:
Big Flop Video Creates Big Problems for Prosecutors
The revelation of the New York Times Sicknick video present three major issues for the FBI and DOJ.
First, from the moment Khater raises a spray canister onward, there is not a single moment in which Khater appears in the same video frame as Officer Sicknick. The below image shows the last time the two appear together in frame.
Khater appears to be a considerable distance away from Sicknick during the alleged assault. It is probable that Khater’s spray never made contact with Sicknick, and that Sicknick was sprayed by someone closer to him in the crowd.
Second, we are told spray is coming out of Khater’s cannister, but it’s not actually shown in this video. The New York Times primes its audience by overlaying a large white box reading “Spray Stream” on the video.
NYT further states:
A thin stream of liquid is visible shooting from a canister in Mr. Khater’s hand. It is unclear in the video what Mr. Khater is firing, and prosecutors have alleged that Mr. Tanios brought two smaller canisters of pepper spray to the Capitol in addition to two cans of Frontiersman bear spray. [NYT]
But does this really show a “a thin stream of visible liquid” actually hitting Sicknick? From a distance, you can’t really tell if a spray has been fired, so in the midst of the confusion and uncertainty, most readers simply defer to the New York Times. Let’s zoom in closer with Photoshop.
What appears from a distance to be a white-ish mist from the canister actually appears upon closer inspection to be simply a continuation of the white-tipped January treeline in the background.
When we set the still frame to max resolution in Photoshop, it becomes apparent that the supposed “bear spray stream” is utterly invisible.
A tonal heat map of the image in Photoshop confirms that there is no “thin stream of liquid” visible at all. The boxed area is entirely indistinguishable from background noise.
There appears to be nothing there.
This is no small point. Some sort of spray should be visible. Recall, for instance, the salience of the spray in the infamous “UC Davis Pepper Spray” incident.
What about bear spray?
It’s virtually impossible to find a “bear spray” incident where the visible spray is not hugely prominent. It’s certainly never wholly invisible over several yards. Full spray mace canisters, like the one allegedly used by Khater, produce fantastically voluminous clouds.
Per the New York Times, we now know the brand of the bear spray that Tanios possessed. Mind you, Tanios is now facing six decades in prison for bringing this spray to the Capitol.
On Monday, federal prosecutors alleged in court that Mr. Khater and Mr. Tanios were carrying Frontiersman bear spray… Images of the bear spray sold by Sabre appear to be similar to the canister seen in Mr. Khater’s hand at one point in the video. [NYT]
The spray’s plume is unmistakable and huge in Frontiersman’s promotional videos.
Heat map gradients in Photoshop reveal the obvious contours of the precise shape of the bear spray canister’s plume when it is actually being deployed.
It’s patently evident from the exact moment that the New York Times froze the video that someone else was actually confirmed to be spraying mace around Sicknick in the moments shortly before Sicknick reacts by rubbing his eyes.
In the below Photoshop heat map, this other bear spray stream near Sicknick is apparent, and it’s coming from the opposite direction of Khater.
So why did the New York Times place a priming bar with “Spray Stream” over that box, when there is no spray inside the box they actually circled? Are we back in Looney Tunes land?
Third, and perhaps indeed most damning…
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