“I’m a big fan of Ashli Babbitt,” President Donald Trump told Greg Kelly of Newsmax on Tuesday, March 25. “And Ashli Babbitt was a really good person who was a big MAGA fan, Trump fan.”
This was all true enough. On January 5, 2021, Babbitt flew by herself from San Diego to Washington to see Trump speak one last time as president. She stayed until the end of Trump’s January 6 speech on the White House Ellipse and walked, still by herself, to the Capitol, arriving at 2:23 p.m., 90 minutes after the first breach of the Capitol perimeter.
Trump continued, “And she was innocently standing there; they even say trying to sort of hold back the crowd. And a man did something to her that was unthinkable when he shot her. And I think it’s a disgrace. I’m going to look into that. I did not know that.”
Trump is largely correct here. A 14-year USAF veteran with a specialty in police work, Babbitt tried vainly to restore order in a crowded lobby beyond the barricaded doors of the House Speaker’s Lobby. Likely to escape the pressing mob, the diminutive Babbitt leaped into the broken window frame of a lobby door and was promptly shot without warning by then Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd.
What Trump “did not know” was that Byrd had gone unpunished, had even been promoted. “I’m going to look at that, too,” said Trump. “His reputation was … I won’t even say; let’s find out about his reputation. We’re going to find out.”
To find out about Byrd’s reputation, the Trump White House will have to start from scratch. The 800-page House J6 report did not mention Byrd by name, let alone question the shooting. To the degree that the report mentioned Ashli Babbitt it was to build the specious case that Trump was indifferent to her death.
How Byrd came to be on the scene as incident commander had a lot to do with the racial politics of DC. Some years back, Byrd fired shots into his own moving vehicle. Some teenagers had stolen it and were fleeing. Not the best of shots, Byrd sent a few stray bullets into the sides of nearby homes. An official investigation ruled that his use of force was unjustified. In another city, the officer gets canned. Not in Washington. Not Byrd.
In 2019, Byrd made the news when he left his Glock .22 in the Capitol Visitor’s Center. As many as twenty thousand people pass through the center on a given day. More troubling still, the Glock does not have a traditional safety. A child could have found it and fired it. According to Roll Call, Byrd told fellow officers, “I will be treated differently.” He was.
The IRS seems to have treated Byrd differently as well. As licensed private investigator Susan Daniels has reported, Byrd owes the IRS $56,365.71 in taxes dating back to 2019. In December 2023, Daniels called Prince George’s County Courts, MD, and confirmed that the money had not yet been paid.
Once shot by Byrd, Ashli instantly fell backward onto the marble floor. As Ashli lay dying, Byrd wasted no time trying to establish his alibi. Within one minute of shooting Ashli, he made an astonishing radio call: “405B. We got shots fired in the lobby. We got shots shots fired in the lobby of the House Chamber. Shots are being fired at us and we’re sh, uhh, prepared to fire back at them. We have guns drawn. Please don’t leave that end. Don’t leave that end.”
Byrd had apparently fallen prey to the media scare stories about the MAGA hordes. Less than a minute later, he made a follow-up call: “405B. We got an injured person. I believe that person was shot.” Believe? Indifferent to the possibility that the shooting had been recorded, Byrd reflexively created his own reality. With a history of being “treated differently,” he was confident his version would prevail.
“Protestor” John Earle Sullivan made either option difficult. Sniffing a payday for the footage he shot of Ashli’s death, he had his agent contact CNN on January 6 and enter into a one-week agreement for use of the critical forty-four seconds. CNN paid him $35,000. The network, however, would quickly come to regret this vestigial act of journalism.
After Sullivan appeared with Anderson Cooper, Trump supporters pointed out that Sullivan was a black activist in the BLM mode. A video from his Instagram account, long since deleted, showed him at a Salt Lake City rally in the summer of 2020 telling the crowd, “We gotta fucking rip Trump right outta that office…. No, no—we ain’t’ about waitin’ until the next election, we’re about to go get that motherfucker!” At the Capitol, however, Sullivan played patriot and egged on the crowd. He recorded himself saying, “There are so many people. Let’s go. This shit is ours! Fuck yeah,” and, “Let’s burn this shit down.”
Whatever Sullivan’s motives, his video made life difficult for Byrd and his patrons. To preserve the narrative of heroic Capitol police resisting an insurrectionist mob, Byrd had to be protected. This would not be easy. Byrd violated just about every USCP directive on the use of deadly force.
Masked and out of uniform, Byrd did not identify himself as a police officer, did not give Ashli verbal orders to stop, nor give her a chance to comply. He did not “diligently assess” the situation before firing. He never considered any other defensive tactics or compliance techniques. He disregarded the presence of seven other police officers in his line of fire. And as incident commander for the House, he appeared to have no comprehension of who was in the Speaker’s Lobby or the House Chamber or what was going on around him. Most critically, Ashli did not pose “an imminent danger of death or serious injury.” When Byrd fired, he did not even know she was a female.
“I was bound to the same use of force continuum as the police are in D.C.,” said Ashli’s husband, Aaron Babbitt, of his time working security at a nuclear facility. “I knew it was a bad shoot.” The Epoch Times use-of-force expert Stan Kephart was even more definitive. “Ashli Babbitt was murdered,” said Kephart. “She was shot and killed under the color of authority by an officer who violated not only the law but his oath.” Kephart considered the shooting “an arrestable offense.”
To Byrd’s good fortune, Sullivan’s video only showed the masked Byrd briefly. This gave his patrons time to hide the still unidentified Byrd from public view until they came up with a public relations strategy. For six months, the USCP put Byrd and a pet up in a “distinguished visitor suite” at the “Presidential Inn” on the grounds of Joint Base Andrews.
For nearly nine months after the shooting, the media showed no interest in Byrd’s identity. Not until August 28, 2021, did the Capitol Police publicly identify Byrd by name. Welcoming Byrd with an exclusive interview was Lester Holt, perhaps the most empathetic black newsman in the business. Byrd was well coached. For those who knew nothing of the facts—NBC’s core audience—he came across as bipartisan, patriotic, and sensitive to a fault. Those who knew the facts witnessed a master class in dissembling.
Holt began by asking Byrd why the Capitol Police withheld his name as long as it did.
Byrd responded, “Threats.”
To further insulate Byrd, Holt followed his initial question with the inevitable, “Racist threats?”
Gravity always wins at the end…
I’m not a cop and have never been a cop but I have great respect for the job they do and the stresses they endure. I have always been sympathetic to shootings that were the result of bad judgement in moments of intense tension physical confrontation, while they are mostly (the prominent ones that involve different races) construed as racial vendettas. It doesn’t make the shooting justified, just not a racial event.
However, Byrd’s case was one of cowardice. He was on the other side of heavy oak doors and the situation on the other side was apparently so under control that the officers standing just behind Babbitt were taking no action. Byrd lost his nerve and made a bad judgement. As such, instead of being heralded as a hero he should be held as accountable as any other cop anywhere. That was not done because the Democrats wanted nothing that might chip away at the narrative that the only bad actors that day was Trump and his supporters.
Byrd needs to be in prison.
Yes he does point blank with no warning.
In addition to being the ultimate coward, Byrd is one very, very sick cat. (And so, too, are the Washington D.C. politicians who supported him. Shame on all of them.)