President Joe Biden falsely claimed that January 6 rioters at the U.S. Capitol “killed two police officers” while giving the commencement address at his alma mater Saturday.
Biden and several top Democrats have repeated the debunked claim previously, but the president’s latest assertion of it came at the University of Delaware, where Biden graduated in 1965. No police officers died during the riots, and one who died the following day was found to have died of natural causes.
“A mob of insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, the very citadel of democracy,” Biden told the newly minted graduates. “Imagine what you’d be thinking today if you had heard this morning before you got here that a group of a thousand people broke down the doors of the parliament of Great Britain, killed two police officers, smashed and ransacked the office of members of the British Parliament or any other, what would you think? What would you think?”
In a commencement speech at the Univ of Delaware, Joe Biden claimed that Trump supporters killed two police officers on Jan 6. Another flat out LIE by Biden & he is never held responsible for continually lying to America. He continues to stir the pot & create more divisiveness.
— LJ 🇺🇸 Wants to Save America (@beyouonlybetter) May 29, 2022
Immediately after U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died on January 7, the department claimed he had been “injured while physically engaging with protesters” and “was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.” The New York Times reported that Sicknick had been beaten with a fire extinguisher, another claim that has since been debunked. The Washington, DC, Office of the Chief Medical Examiner told the Washington Examiner in April that Sicknick’s death was “natural” and caused by two strokes.
Two other police officers, Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith and Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood, killed themselves following the attacks. The only people involved in the riots who died on January 6 were Air Force veteran and Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, who was shot in the neck by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, who was cleared of wrongdoing; two protesters who suffered fatal heart attacks, and another who died of a suspected drug overdose.
Biden claimed in a speech in Wisconsin in March that rioters killed five police officers.
“Look, how would you feel if you saw crowds storm and break down the doors of the British Parliament, kill five cops, injure 145 — or the German Bundestag, or the Italian Parliament?” he said. “I think you’d wonder.
“Well, that’s what the rest of the world saw. It’s not who we are. And now, we’re proving, under pressure, that we are not that country. We’re united.”
Democrats on the House January 6 Commission have also repeated the claim that rioters killed police officers. Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) said in his opening remarks on the first day of hearings last July that “seven people lost their lives” in the riot. The number would appear to include Sicknick, Babbitt, the officers who committed suicide, the protesters who suffered fatal heart attacks, and the one who died of a suspected drug overdose.
On Friday, Biden told another whopper while addressing graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy. He claimed he’d been accepted to the venerable institution in 1965 but opted for the University of Delaware because future NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach blocked his path to gridiron glory. In fact, by 1965, Biden had already graduated from college, and while he was at Delaware, he never played varsity football despite later claiming he did.