Gladys Sicknick, the mother of fallen US Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, said that she is hopeful her meetings with GOP senators today will change their minds on whether to vote for a Jan. 6 commission.
“I hope so. I hope so. Brian had a work ethic second to none. He was just there for our country,” she said. “He was just doing his job and he got caught up in it’s very sad.”
She said she usually “stays in the background, but I just couldn’t stay quiet anymore.”
Sicknick is meeting with more than a dozen members of the Senate ahead of their vote on whether to set up a commission to investigate what happened on Jan. 6.
Only three GOP senators — Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — have expressed their support for advancing the legislation, and Democrats need at least 10 Republicans.
Collins said Wednesday, “We need to have a commission.” But she wants the Senate to vote on an amendment addressing her two main concerns with the bill: the chairperson appoints the staff (in consultation with the vice-chairperson), and the commission’s work could last into the first two months of an election year. Schumer has said a separate Republican staff “warring” with a Democratic staff would be untenable.
Sicknick was joined today by her son’s longtime girlfriend, Sandra Garza, DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, United States Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, and former Congresswoman Barbara Comstock.
“We are just so thankful to Senator Romney and his support,” Garza said after their meeting with the Utah Senator, who supports the commission. “We just don’t want other people to get harmed or for this to happen again.”
Garza said members who are considering voting against the legislation should “look at the footage of what happened, it’s very obvious it wasn’t a peaceful day.”
“If January sixth didn’t happen, Brian would still be here,” Dunn said.
And from outside GOP Sen. Ron Johnson’s office she said her message to him was:
“Just look at the footage of all these people went through, and all these police officers did to make them safe, to keep them safe.”
She said “yes I did” call the congressional inaction a slap in the face, as she wrote in her letter.
“Because they put their lives on the line,” she said.
Watch her remarks:
CNN’s Alex Rogers, Manu Raju and Ted Barrett contributed reporting to this post.