It’s already known that internal police documents about the shooting death of Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt by a U.S. Capitol police officer during the ruckus on Jan. 6, 2021, show there was no reason for her to die.
Now an analysis by the Epoch Times reveals it was Babbitt who “desperately tried to prevent rioters from vandalizing the doors leading to the Speaker’s Lobby at the Capitol that day, even stepping between one troublemaker and officers guarding the doors.”
Democrats, and their allies in the legacy media, have portrayed her over and over as a rioter who was an the Capitol as part of an “insurrection,” which likely is more a political claim that anything else.
The Epoch Times said its “frame-by-frame video evidence” confirmed that the veteran was shot and killed by a police officer who, according to witnesses, did not issue a verbal warning, as she tried to get through a broken window.
“Video clips appear to show she tried to prevent the attack, not join it,” the Times reported.
The video comes from John Sullivan, also known as Jayden X, and reveals Babbitt “tried to stop the violence against the Speaker’s Lobby at least four times before she climbed into a broken window and was fatally shot by U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd. At one point, she was so distressed at the violence, she jumped up and down in frustration.”
An audio analysis of the video taken in the Capitol building reveals Babbitt shouted, “Stop! No! Don’t! Wait!,” her husband, Aaron Babbitt explained in the report.
“The reality of it is, Ashli wasn’t a violent person. She was a good person, but they’ve demonized her to become this domestic terrorist that she never has been,” charged Tayler Hansen, a journalist who was close to Babbitt when she was shot and killed.
“That’s just insane to me that they can actually get away with pushing this narrative. They’ve done that by suppressing first-hand witnesses like me,” Hansen continued.
The Times documented Hansen’s account:
He was following Babbitt in a hallway in the Capitol when she turned a corner, and as a group of people followed, she was “stuck in the corner.”
Shortly before being shot, she was chatting with three Capitol Police officers and a D.C. Metro officer, he said.
“All of those officers, Officer Yetter and the other officers in the hall, the MPD cops, they were all joking with her and laughing with her,” Hansen said. “They were having conversations and joking and laughing. Then not even five minutes later, Michael Byrd comes and executes her.”
In fact, she leaned in between rioter Zachary Alam and one of the officers, the report said.
“Alam turned away from Babbitt and punched a window to the side of the officer’s head. Babbitt winces just before Alam strikes the window with his right hand. He later uses a helmet to smash the tempered glass,” the report explained. “An audio analysis of video footage taken in the hallway reveals that Babbitt shouted, ‘Stop! No! Don’t! Wait!’ according to her husband, Aaron Babbitt.”
He said he’s watched the murder of his wife on video. “I have come to my own conclusion that Ashli came to a point of realization that she was in very bad situation and the police weren’t acting appropriately to what she was witnessing,” he said.
She appeared to be shocked by men smashing glass windows, and her husband said she must have feared for her life, so “she climbed into the broken window to escape. Byrd shot her before she got more than partway into the window frame,” the report said.
Witnesses have said they didn’t hear any warnings from inside the Speaker’s Lobby before the shot was fired.
Hansen had shouted a warning, however, about the officer’s gun, he said.
“It all comes down to which mental angle a person views it from. If they hate Ashli because they believe the lies, that’s all they see: her being part of a mob,” Aaron Babbitt told the Times. “Us who love her, know her, know every action and emotion she was displaying—she realized a minute before her death she was not in a friendly situation and something very wrong was occurring.”
Real Clear Investigations previously reported that Byrd actually was cleared of wrongdoing for killing Babbitt without making a statement about it.
“He didn’t provide any statement to [criminal] investigators and they didn’t push him to make a statement,” Babbitt family attorney Terry Roberts said in an interview with Real Clear Investigations. “It’s astonishing how skimpy his investigative file is.”
Roberts, who has spoken with the D.C. MPD detective assigned to the case, said the kid-glove treatment of Byrd raises suspicions the investigation was a “whitewash,” RCI reported.
And the lawyer’s account is backed up by a January 2021 internal affairs report, which notes Byrd “declined to provide a statement,” the report said.
Asked about it, a police department spokesman affirmed Byrd failed to cooperate with internal affairs agents or FBI agents.
RCI said, “In April, within four months of the shooting, Byrd was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by the Justice Department, which declined to impanel a grand jury to hear evidence in a departure from other lethal police-shooting cases involving unarmed citizens. Justice ruled there “was not enough evidence” to conclude Byrd violated Babbitt’s civil rights or willfully acted recklessly in shooting her.”
Meanwhile, the demonization of Babbitt has continued in the media. WND chief executive and columnist Joseph Farah explained, “The Associated Press, once a great news service, asked a question this week about Ashli Babbitt, the one woman to lose her life at the Jan. 6 Capitol kerfuffle to an assassin under the cover of law. Is she a ‘martyr’? Yes, AP, she is!”
He explained, “Michael Biesecker, the hitman for the AP, victimized the Air Force veteran once again, after she was deprived of her life without even a warning by a ‘law enforcement officer’ intent on killing her. What was her ‘crime’? At most, trespassing.”
He cited the AP’s repeating “the ugliest smears about a crime victim, who never got a chance to confront her assailant or have her day in court or to rest at peace?”
While leftists call her an “insurrectionist,” the column pointed out, “She never lifted a finger! She walked into the U.S. Capitol, without a weapon, and a few minutes later, was shot to death by a law enforcement officer who fired his gun against all police procedure in any jurisdiction of the land. Babbitt never saw it coming.”
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