Trump on Ashli Babbitt Shooting: "I Think It's A Disgrace."

Shocked That Babbitt Shooter Michael Byrd Is Still on the Job

"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?”

Long before internet sleuths even deduced Byrd’s identity, the NBC audience was led to believe Trump supporters were making racist threats. “I do hate that son of a bitch,” said Ashli’s mom, Micki Witthoeft, “not because he’s black, but because he killed my child.”

As Holt repeated twice, the USCP, the Metropolitan DC Police, the FBI, and the DOJ had all cleared Byrd of any wrongdoing. This was true. According to the DOJ, the fact that “an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment” did not make him criminally culpable. That officer would have had to act “with a bad purpose to disregard the law.” By this standard, Byrd was at least as guilty as, say, Derek Chauvin or Kim Potter, the Minnesota officer imprisoned for the accidental 2021 shooting of Daunte Wright.

The DOJ publicly cleared Byrd in April 2021—without mentioning his name. What no one could clear him of, especially after his one-time appearance on NBC, was lying. Byrd lied about things big and small, even things he didn’t have to lie about. Most grandiose was his claim, “I know that day I saved countless lives.” Among those he claimed to have saved were members of Congress who were “disabled” or very nearly so. “Some of those individuals were in the lobby with me,” said Byrd. In fact, there were no members of Congress in the lobby, let alone disabled ones.

Not until the twenty-three-minute mark of the interview did either Holt or Byrd mention Ashli by name. Holt asked what Byrd made of the fact that “some have elevated Ashli Babbitt to the status of the martyr.” Replied Byrd, who surely had the questions provided to him in advance, “I have no reaction to that.” Holt then set up Byrd for the interview’s takeaway message, “I just want the truth to be told.” Apparently, Byrd told his truth well enough to please his elite masters. To show their indifference to the truth, they gave Byrd a $30,000 retention bonus and had him promoted to captain two years after the interview.

Much of what we know about the shooting comes from a $30 million wrongful death law suit filed by Judicial Watch on behalf of Ashli’s husband, Aaron Babbitt. The Biden DOJ did everything in its power to thwart the suit. As Greg Kelly told Trump, the DOJ is still in court fighting against the suit scheduled for trial in 2026 Said Trump, “Well, I'll look into that. I mean, you're just telling me that for the first time, I haven't heard that.”

For the full account please read ASHLI: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6