Democrats used the death of Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick as evidence in the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump saying that he died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.
Three months later, the medical examiner finally released Sicknick’s cause of death as “natural.”

Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who engaged rioters, suffered two strokes and died of natural causes, officials sayhttps://t.co/V9808REzqF

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 19, 2021

According to Washington’s chief medical examiner, officer Brian Sicknick suffered strokes and died of natural causes a day after the Jan. 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol building.

The finding could make it difficult, if not impossible, to bring murder charges in Sicknick’s death. Two men were arrested last month and charged with assaulting the officer with a chemical spray.

42-year-old Sicknick’s official cause of death was “acute brainstem and cerebellar infarcts due to acute basilar artery thrombosis,” according to the medical examiner’s office.

The officer’s manner of death — the circumstances surrounding his passing — was determined to be “natural,” the office said. That term is used when a death is caused solely by a disease and is not hastened by an injury.