The only video Ashli Babbitt’s mom has seen of her daughter on January 6 is a clip of her walking from Donald Trump’s speech to Capitol Hill. “That brings me peace,” Micki Witthoeft, Ashli’s mom, told me by phone on Wednesday. “She was in her zone, so happy, having a great day.”
“Until that son-of-a-bitch shot her.”
Nearly seven months after a United States Capitol Police officer shot Ashli Babbitt in the Capitol building on January 6, the government and subservient corporate news media still refuse to confirm the name of the federal officer who killed her. (Investigative journalist Paul Sperry recently reported the shooter likely is USCP Lt. Michael Byrd.) The Justice Department closed its investigation into her shooting in April and announced the unnamed officer would not face criminal charges.
Three USCP officers participated in an overdramatic public hearing before the January 6 select committee on Tuesday, often referring to protesters as “terrorists,” “insurrectionists,” and “traitors,” though not a single person arrested in the aftermath has been charged with terrorism, insurrection, or treason. They repeatedly claimed they thought they would be killed by the protesters. USCP officer Harry Dunn asked for a moment of silence in honor of Officer Brian Sicknick to once again promote the falsehood that he was killed in the line of duty.
But there was no moment of silence for Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and Air National Guardsman with eight deployments overseas, including to Iraq and Afghanistan, who actually was killed on January 6. There were no tears and table-pounding from crisis-actor cops or emotionally-fragile lawmakers mourning her premature death. Babbitt was just 35.
In fact, no one bothered to mention her name.
Witthoeft, 57, described her oldest child as “determined and strong willed.” A “tomboy” of sorts, Ashli always was up for adventure. While in high school, Ashli decided she wanted to join the military; Witthoeft said she signed a notarized document to allow Ashli to enroll in the Air Force at the age of 17. “September 11 strengthened her conviction to serve,” Witthoeft said.
Ashli graduated from El Capitan High School in Lakeside, California in 2003 and entered the U.S. Air Force. On her 21st birthday, Ashli sustained serious injuries in an explosion at Camp Bucca detention facility in Iraq and was airlifted to a hospital in Germany.
Ashli’s adventurous spirit, Witthoeft explained, is what motivated her daughter to travel alone from California to Washington, D.C. so she could listen to Donald Trump’s speech on January 6. “She was an avid Trump supporter, she knew that’s where she had to be,” Witthoeft said. “She went to all the [Trump] rallies if there was one nearby. She was the political one at our house.” At the time, Ashli and her husband, Aaron, were operating a pool cleaning company in southern California.
Video shows Babbitt with several other people, including police officers, outside the Speaker’s Lobby on the afternoon of January 6. Babbitt is seen yelling at officers stationed in front of a set of double doors, one with a broken window. USCP officers stepped aside a few moments later; people started to smash the glass of the locked doors. Babbitt then attempted to climb through one of the windows.
That’s when the officer, wearing gloves, lifted his firearm and shot her in the neck. She died almost immediately.
Witthoeft remembers getting the call from her daughter-in-law at work. “We knew from the news reports that someone had been shot and killed at the Capitol. So when she called to say Ashli was shot, I just knew. I could tell in her voice. We hoped there was time to pack a bag and get to D.C., but there wasn’t.”
Witthoeft said “red tape” and the military-style lockdown in the capital caused a long delay in getting Babbitt’s body back home. In February, Babbitt was cremated and her remains scattered into the Pacific Ocean near her favorite dog park.
Three days later, after sleeping on her belongings awaiting her return, Babbitt’s beloved German Shepherd died.
And if you don’t find all this heartbreaking, well, you’re nobody I ever want to be in the same room with.
Umm, actually, I take that back.
A few weeks after Ashli was killed, Witthoeft said she finally took her head off her pillow and started making calls. A staffer for Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) office at first hung up on her, insisting he didn’t know who Ashli Babbitt was. Witthoeft called again; the same staffer answered. She asked to speak with her senator for two minutes. “Ma’am, I am sorry for your unfortunate situation but if your daughter hadn’t stormed the Capitol, she wouldn’t have been shot,” Witthoeft said the staffer told her. “Dianne Feinstein will never have two minutes for you.”
Yep, I take it back. I’d give anything to have about five minutes alone in the same room with that arrogant, cruel piece of shit. Just five minutes, that’s all.
My God. Your tax dollars at work, people. Compare, contrast:
Donald Trump called Witthoeft on July 1. He spoke very warmly about Ashli and talked about the political prisoners held without bond in a D.C. jail for months awaiting trial or plea offers. The people who went to Washington on January 6, Witthoeft said, were “true patriots doing what [the president] told them to do. They believed this was a stolen election.”
Which is nothing more than the plain, self-evident truth. That Trump made time to speak with Ashli’s mom speaks well of him, I must say. Meanwhile, Feinstein’s filthwad staffer is by no means the only one I’d happily give my left testicle for some quality alone-time with.
Her family’s grief has been compounded by the media’s grotesque portrayal of their loved one as a “QAnon conspiracy theorist,” or worse, a traitor who got what she deserved. And such vile comments aren’t coming only from Democrats or leftist nutjobs such as Keith Olbermann. This week, Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) told a caller on a Fargo radio station that Babbitt was a “criminal” and the public is not entitled to know the identity of the federal officer who killed her. “[W]hat would be the purpose of releasing that officer’s name?” Cramer fumed at the caller’s demand to release his name. “What do you need to know the officer’s name for?”
The first-term Republican senator said he is “grateful” for the officer who shot Babbitt.
Representative Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) defended the shooting in a C-SPAN interview this week. Recalling his interaction with the officer after Babbitt was killed, Mullin said, “I gave him a hug and I said, ‘sir, you did what you had to do.’” Mullin never mentioned Babbitt’s name.
Okay, if you aren’t absolutely trembling with rage at this point, might want to have someone near at hand check you for a pulse. Because you almost certainly don’t have one. In fact, it should be throbbing quite visibly in the veins running below and beside your tightly-clenched teeth, dangerously close to bursting them wide open at this gut-wrenching story.
“It’s infuriating,” Witthoeft told me. “She was there exercising her First Amendment rights. This country was founded on brave men and women and I feel like that’s what our patriots were doing,” Witthoeft also said she sings the National Anthem every night at 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time in solidarity with the January 6 detainees held in a D.C. jail, who sing the song every night at 9:00 p.m. in the East. “We’re fighting for justice for all of them.”
Witthoeft, however, is comforted by the outpouring of love and support from so many Americans “lifting up Ashli’s name.” She hopes it results in a “betterment of America.”
A nice thought, generous almost to a fault. Alas, there’s only one way for that to happen now, I’m afraid. And “nice” won’t have anything to do with it.
And her message to those who smear her late daughter’s name? “You only have awful things to say? Well, my daughter fought for your right to say them.”
“You’re welcome.”
No. No, non, nein, nyet, nie. The one and only thing those wretched abominations—the heartless, soulless flatworms just mentioned, along with the USCP thugs, Pelosi, Feinstein herself, and all the rest of Mordor On The Potomac’s repulsive panoply of orcs, trolls, and werewolves—are “welcome” to as far as I’m concerned is excruciating pain and a protracted, agonizing death while screaming. Afterwards, a fitting “memorial” commemorating lives squandered in single-minded pursuit of self-indulgence, ill-gotten riches, and power: a prominent place adorning trees and/or lampposts for them along the Capitol Mall, their mouldering corpses left to swing gently in the breeze until the buzzards have eaten their fill. Those things they’re “welcome” to, and nothing whatsoever more.
Call it their just deserts, say. I repeat: if, after reading this, you are NOT suffused with blinding, inchoate, choking rage, there is DEFINITELY something badly wrong with you.
Proving yet again that THERE ARE NO GOOD COPS!!!
But there are some good sheriffs
I got to the point with the Feinstein staffer and couldn’t stomach any more.
She betrayed her Country with a driver who was a spy for the Chinese and they have the chutzpah to criticize Ashli Babbitt?
They should all hang but feel some real pain first since hanging’s too good for ’em.
Yes, death alone is not enough for these traitors.
Says the guy who will do absolutely nothing, nada, against the traitors. It’s always somebody elses responsibility to take on TPTB.
You guys rage against the machine, fantasizing about death and torture visited upon the enemies of all things good, and what do you have to show for it: a few thumbs up from likeminded Keyboard Kommandos.
At least Aesop, at his blog, often lays out in detail, many practical things people can do before and after the SHTF, and hopefully live to see a brighter future.
All you guys do is squawk to each other.
Mask up, Comrade. You wouldn’t know anything we might or might not do and we’re certainly not going to put it up here.
But YOU ran the Panic Porn for them.
Wank it Hank, you’re the REAL Warrior, we’re all sure of that. Why you fought the WuFlu like Brave Sir Robin.
None of us could come close to your bravery, Comrade, displayed on the field of Virus Valor.
Yawn.
That’s it. That’s the counter argument. All I’m seeing is squawk, squawk, squawk.
Please, you and Barry should post some selfies on the hill you’re prepared to die on. Tough guys, not.
Yawn. Troll elsewhere Brave Sir Robin.
henryKaren is a pussy and a joke. No one likes you. I’m sure even the spaniards would like to see you gone.
Oh, St. fauci says double masks are even better. I suggest you put on four. You’ll know when you have enough to stop a virus, it’s when you can’t breathe.
Oh look, Aesop’s butt buddy checks in from spain to tell Americans to shut up, again. A left wing asshole afraid of his own shadow. Hey henryKaren, we will not shut up, not now, not ever. Put your mask on per Fables direction, like a good little chimp.
And oh, by the way, you have no clue what I do and don’t do, nor what others have done and will do. We know what you will do,
cower in your mask waiting for someone else to clean up your shit.
You will do nothing when they come storming through your door, and you know it. You guys couldn’t even handle some pushback over at Bill’s place, choosing instead to whine over and over again. Such brave warriors.
It wasn’t “pushback”. Brave DP also pulled a Brave Robin and refused to let us talk.
Because po’ little you was offended.
You really are full of shit. Bill kicked us out because you buttholes couldn’t handle the truth. The only whining was you chicken shits worried abut catching the flu. Every fucking thing we said has been proven correct and everything you said proven to be nothing but unadulterated made in china bullshit.
Whine some more about how you might get the virus, chickenshit.
And you live in spain with the most restrictive gun laws in europe. So, no chance you would do anything when the marxists come in your front door. You choose to live in the marxist paradise.
You are dishonest. And a nasty perverted human being.
Jews gonna Jew. Nothing new here! Damn Jew for what Jew have done to this world!!!
I didn’t know Barry and Kenny were Jews.
A fallen hero who deserves justice.
The POW’s still imprisoned in DC for the Jan 6th protest also deserve justice.
How is one to achieve justice when it is now blocked at every level by the very people & institutions charged with carrying it out?
If there can be no justice, how can there be peace?
If there can be no justice & no peace, why should we pretend like our safety & our rights are being appropriately guarded by those who willingly accepted those duties?
Why should we pretend that we are not being attacked, when clearly we are?
Why should we pretend that we are not at war?
Why should we not at accordingly?
What other options remain?
Every attempt for redress of grievances regarding an ever-growing list of abuses has been ignored, blocked, or summarily rejected without even the pretense of due consideration.
It appears we have exhausted all other options available to us.
If this is true, then there can be only one conclusion that follows from that.
We are at war.
And we cannot afford to pretend otherwise any longer.
The question remains, do we have a consensus on that?
I didn’t think I could despise Diane Feinstein any more than I already did. I was wrong. I hope she got the real jab and not the placebo.