Former NBC29 State Capitol Bureau chief Tim Murtaugh played a key role in Thursday’s prime-time hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 insurgency led by former president Donald Trump.
Murtaugh was wrapping up his nearly two-year stint as director of communications for the Trump re-election campaign when he texted deputy director Matthew Wolking on Jan. 9 about the president’s silence on the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick from injuries Sicknick sustained while defending the U.S. Capitol from the attack by a group of pro-Trump rioters.
“Shitty not to have even acknowledged the death of the Capitol Police officer,” Murtaugh texted, according to a transcript released by the House panel.
“That is enraging to me,” Wolking replied. “Everything he said about supporting law enforcement was a lie.”
“You know what that is, of course, if he acknowledged the dead cop, he’d be implicitly faulting the mob. And he won’t do that, because they’re his people,” Murtaugh replied to Wolking. “And he would also be close to acknowledging that what he lit at the rally got out of control. No way he acknowledges something that could ultimately be called his fault. No way.”
Murtaugh is now a principal with Line Drive Public Affairs LLC, an Alexandria-based PR and communications strategy firm. He joined the Trump re-election campaign in 2019 after serving as communications director for the USDA, Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Lou Barletta and the Republican Governors Association.
Murtaugh had also served as director of communications for the Republican Party of Virginia and former Attorney General Jerry Kilgore.
A 1991 graduate of Temple University, Murtaugh began his career as a member of the news media, working for two years as a news anchor and reporter at WBQB-FM/WFVA-AM in Fredericksburg before launching the State Capitol Bureau for NBC29 in 1994, remaining there through the end of 1999.
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Chris Graham
