#michael byrd

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Trump calls a Code Red on the Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt

By now, most of us know that the Trump White House has an entire section dedicated to whitewashing Jan. 6. But the most outrageous moment ca

Darrell Lucus for Daily Kos:

By now, most of us know that the Trump White House Website has an entire section dedicated to whitewashing Jan. 6. But the most outrageous moment came when Trump effectively put a giant target on the back of Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt. In the eyes of Trump, this amounted to murder. Sen. Ruben Gallego flagged it on his socials.  Let’s say it clearly, firmly, and in no uncertain terms. The president of the United States is using the power of his office to call a Code Red on a police officer—one who may very well have not only kept the insurrection from getting out of hand, but saved the republic. In August 2021, an internal review not only cleared Byrd of wrongdoing, but found he almost certainly saved lives by shooting Babbitt. Nicholas Goldberg of the Los Angeles Times went further in his review of the footage from that day (diaried by yours truly here). He found Babbitt was front and center in a particularly intimidating moment during the insurrection. She was at the front of a horde screaming to be allowed through to the Speaker’s Lobby, where several lawmakers were holed up.    As the sansculottes surged, Byrd pointed his gun at them. Babbitt should have known this meant “Get back!” After all, she was an Air Force security guard. Instead, as we now know, Babbitt got two of her fellow “patriots” to boost her through a broken window in the Speaker’s Lobby. Just as she barrels through, Byrd squeezed off a single round, mortally wounding her. 

Excellent post from Darrell Lucus on Daily Kos: Insurrection-inciting scumbag Donald Trump put out a history revisionist piece painting cop-killing terrorist Ashli Babbitt in a positive light and painting Michael Byrd, the cop who rightly killed her, in a bad light.

[loneranger0369]

"Lieut." Michael Byrd on why he shot and killed Ashli Babbitt. He goes on to say things like : "Based on my Training, I did what was appropriate"; "I followed my training...."; "I spent countless Years preparing for such a moment"; "I did my Job"; "I was taking a tactical Stance" and "I didn't even realize how loud I was screaming people to get back".

FUCKING LIAR!!!!

He wasn't even opening his mouth! That can clearly be seen in this Video.

Even if what he said is all true, the countless years of Training, was to shoot people..?

When you plan to fatally shoot someone, the least one needs to do, is TAKE A WARNING SHOT AT THEIR FEET/LEGS!!

I am no Police. A FUCKING NOBODY, like me, knows this. "Countless Years of Training" to save people, yet this stupid Bitch WANTEDLY KILLED A PERSON!!

White-skinned or black-skinned, all American Cops are killers.

FUCK THE POLICE!!!

[mysharona1987]

[speedygal]

The black guy guy who strayed the mob away from the senate? Eugene Goodman.

The person who defended the senate by warning and shooting insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt? A black man revealing his identity after being cleared. Lt Michael Byrd.

There were not one but two black men that defended Democracy on January 6th during two critical moments that tested the convictions, the liberty, the strength, the pressure test of capitol police defending the heart of America. Our heroes kept us from falling into dictatorship.

[gettothedancing]

3 Babbitt Shooting Witnesses Removed from FBI Most-Wanted List

The listing of “wanted” photos now skips from 309 to 313.

It has been the FBI’s practice to leave photos on the page and label them with a red banner that says “ARRESTED” any time a person is taken into custody.

One of the three men removed from the FBI list is a journalist who has covered riots and unrest around the country, according to journalist Tayler Hansen, who stood next to the man in the hallway on Jan. 6.

“He is media. He’s a photojournalist,” Hansen told The Epoch Times.

When Babbitt was shot by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd at 2:44 p.m. Jan. 6, the photojournalist immediately rendered first aid, Hansen said.

“Right as she got shot, he was the only one that reacted, and he immediately reached for his medical bag,” Hansen said. “He had a med bag on him, and started digging in it.

“He was the one who told me to grab a flashlight. He told me to turn my flashlight on so he could find her wounds,” Hansen said. “He was trying to help Ashli throughout the whole thing. He was one of the people the cops told to stop rendering medical aid to her.”

The man told Hansen he had substantial emergency medical training and carried a first-aid kit in his backpack.

“The way he handled that situation, I’ve never seen anything like it. He knew exactly what to do. He was the first one to react out of everybody,” Hansen said.

After a few minutes, police ordered everyone to move away from Babbitt so they had room to render proper emergency medical care.

The man has covered rioting in Portland and was present in Kenosha, Wis., the night Kyle Rittenhouse shot three men in self-defense during rioting over the police shooting of a black man armed with a knife in the summer of 2020, Hansen said.

“I can imagine he’s seen some stuff and dealt with something like that in the past and that’s why he was so level-headed compared to everyone else in that room,” Hansen said.

One of the other men removed from the FBI Most Wanted list is a still photographer, Hansen said. The third man, who carried a United States flag in the Speaker’s Lobby hallway, was among the first people to leave the area after Byrd shot Babbitt.

Aaron Babbitt, Ashli’s husband, said the situation leaves him wondering.

“I’d like an explanation as to why they’ve been removed,” Babbitt told The Epoch Times. “If there’s nothing nefarious, then that shouldn’t be a problem. The silence is, and has been, deafening.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ashli Babbitt’s Family, DOJ Reach Settlement

Babbitt was fatally shot by police after attempting to climb through a window at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Brandi Buchman at HuffPost:

Lawyers for the Justice Department and attorneys representing Ashli Babbitt, the woman who attempted to climb through a smashed window in the Speaker’s Lobby at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and was fatally shot by police as lawmakers fled the impending mob, said that a “settlement in principle” has been reached in the civil lawsuit brought against the U.S. government by Babbitt’s family. The settlement has not been signed yet, and attorneys did not reveal the final settlement amount during a hearing before U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes on Friday. Babbitt’s family has previously asked for $30 million. Babbitt was shot by U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, and an internal investigation determined that Byrd had acted lawfully when trying to repel the 35-year-old woman as rioters were closing in on lawmakers inside the Capitol. A fight over payment is also ongoing in the case. Terrell Roberts, a former lawyer for the Babbitt family, asked the judge early on Friday to issue a lien on the final settlement of at least 25% so he could collect on allegedly unpaid attorneys’ fees. In his request to the judge, Roberts also revealed that he had only learned a settlement had been reached because a reporter called him to confirm it.

Disgusting to see the family of domestic terrorist Ashli Babbitt reach a settlement with the DOJ.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

How Trump turned a January 6 death into the politics of ‘protecting women’

Ashli Babbitt was killed while trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election — and became proof to Trump and his followers that women

Jennifer Gerson at The 19th:

In the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump quickly took up the cause of a 35-year-old veteran named Ashli Babbitt. “Who killed Ashli Babbitt?” he asked in a one-sentence statement on July 1, 2021.  “An innocent, wonderful, incredible woman, a military woman,” Trump said during a Fox News interview a few weeks later.  To Trump and his Make America Great Again movement, Babbitt was not an insurrectionist shot while trying to get close to the members of Congress who were certifying the election results, the sole rioter killed by police that day. She was a martyr, someone who died for her beliefs. She was a woman who had died for lack of protection.  Trump’s framing of Babbitt’s death in the months after he left office served as one of the guiding principles of his second term: the necessity of “protecting women” and an insistence on identifying and eradicating those he sees as posing a threat to them.

Who was Ashli Babbitt?

She was an Air Force veteran who had done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. She was married and divorced and then married again. She faced criminal charges after an altercation with an ex-girlfriend of her second husband. She voted for Barack Obama. She bought a pool care business with her husband. She discovered the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon, which asserted that Trump was trying to save the country from a cabal of Satan-worshipping child molesters installed within the United States government. Over time, Babbitt became increasingly steeped in QAnon and was primed to believe the robustly disproved conspiracy that the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. So when Trump encouraged his followers to go to Washington to support him on January 6, 2021, she did. While the election results were being officially certified by Congress, Trump addressed a crowd that included Babbitt. And when he encouraged them to go to the Capitol, many did — Babbitt among them. 

Not everyone who went to the Capitol broke into the building, but she did. With a Trump flag draped over her shoulders like a superhero’s cape, Babbitt was part of the group who tried to gain access to the Speaker’s Lobby, just outside the House chamber. Another rioter smashed glass. As Babbitt tried to crawl through, a Capitol Police officer shot her from inside the lobby. Video footage from the day shows Babbitt falling backward into the crowd as blood pours out of her mouth. After the shooting, many rioters began to flee the Capitol grounds. Babbitt was transported to Washington Hospital Center. She was declared dead upon arrival. The officer who killed Babbitt was cleared of wrongdoing; Lt. Michael Byrd potentially saved lives by stopping the mob, lawmakers and police said.  But her death gave Trump’s Make America Great Again movement something it needed: a martyr. 

[...] For Trump, Riley’s and Babbitt’s  deaths helped reinforce the message that women’s lives are in danger and that they need to be saved — something he emphasized in his campaigns as he painted immigrants and his political opponents as threats. 

“It all plays into the fears and vulnerabilities that women have to navigate, which is that women are more vulnerable to sexual and gender-based violence and women are tasked culturally with caring for the home and for their children,” said Hilary Matfess, an assistant professor at the University of Denver and the co-author of an analysis done by the Program on Extremism at George Washington University on gender and the January 6 insurrection. “So this message of scary immigrants are going to come in and destroy your communities with drugs and rape your women and children is intended to strike fear into a very specific demographic — namely, suburban White women.”

Donald Trump’s martyrization of terrorist Ashli Babbitt is all about protecting [suburban] white womanhood.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Trump Misadministration to pay $5M settlement to the family of domestic terrorist and January 6th Insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt

Rob Taub at NewsNation Now:

(NewsNation) — The family of Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt will receive a $5 million settlement from the Trump administration, a report said. Babbitt, a Trump supporter, was shot and killed while in the mob breaching the House Speaker’s Lobby. The settlement resolves a $30 million suit, reached in May, brought by Babbitt’s estate and the conservative group Judicial Watch. The case from Babbitt’s family was initially filed in California and then transferred to federal court in 2024 and was defended by the Justice Department under the Joe Biden administration. [...] Babbitt’s estate, in a civil lawsuit, accused U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd of being negligent in the use of force and his firearm. They also argued that Byrd was not in uniform and was wearing a COVID-19 mask when he opened fire at Babbitt.

What a gross injustice!

See Also:

Daily Kos: DOJ will give $5M to family of Jan. 6 rioter—with your money