Defending the indefensible.

All told, seven people died in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6. But only Ashli Babbitt’s death was directly caused by violence that day. She was a rioter killed by a Capitol Police officer, who fired the only shot by any person during the 4½-hour siege. Yet the story of who he is and why he opened fire remains shrouded in mystery.

The Deep State looks after its own.

More than six weeks after Babbitt succumbed to a single gunshot wound to the upper chest, authorities are keeping secret the identity of the officer who fired the fatal round. They won’t release his name, and the major news media aren’t clamoring for it, in stark contrast to other high-profile police shootings of unarmed civilians.

Baffling, that.

Drawing on interviews with informed sources and available documents, RealClearInvestigations has put together a portrait of the actual shooter and the shooting, which some describe as completely justified and others call murder.

The officer who opened fire on Babbitt holds the rank of lieutenant and is a longtime veteran of the force who worked protective detail in the Speaker’s Lobby, a highly restricted area behind the House chamber, sources say. An African-American, he was put on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation led by the Metropolitan Police of the District of Columbia, which shares jurisdiction with the Capitol Police. The Justice Department is also involved in the inquiry.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that the officer has been interviewed and cleared of criminal wrongdoing by a preliminary investigation, suggesting that the police killing may soon be ruled justifiable homicide. But D.C. Police spokeswoman Alaina Gertz told RCI, “This case remains under active investigation.”

The well-placed sources told RCI the plainclothes officer has gone into hiding out of fear for his safety.

Aww, that’s a shame.

They said he worries about reports that some of those arrested in the riots have declared “open (hunting) season” on whoever killed Babbitt, now a martyr in their cause. Twitter accounts have been created in her name, including “We Are Ashli Babbitt” and “Justice For Ashli Babbitt.” “An unarmed American patriot was murdered in cold blood! We need to know who murdered #AshliBabbitt!” proclaimed one recent post.

Meanwhile, numerous lawmakers from both parties have hailed the lieutenant as a hero who saved lives that fateful day.

I’d expect no less from the cringing, despicable cowards.

Most of the circumstances that led to his actions are still unclear. But video footage filmed by rioters shows the lieutenant, after taking up a defensive position in a doorway, carefully aiming and shooting Babbitt as she tries to climb through a smashed window beside a barricaded double door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby, part of a pro-Trump mob of protesters. Babbitt, 35, had no weapon. She died later at a hospital. The decorated Air Force veteran, who had traveled from San Diego, was wearing a Trump flag as a cape when she was shot.

Dressed in a dark suit and white shirt with cufflinks, along with a beaded bracelet on his right shooting hand, the Capitol Police officer fired at her from the side of the barricade, where he had been hidden from view in a doorway. At least from what can be seen and heard from the video, he appears to issue no commands to stop nor any verbal warning that he would shoot.

“That was an execution,” said Jack Feeley, a fellow Air Force vet and friend of Babbitt, adding that it “breaks my heart to know millions of people watched my friend be executed on live television.”

A former White House national security aide and Pentagon official agreed the officer appeared trigger happy. “It was an assassination. I’ve never seen a more clear case in all my years. I’ve seen EJKs that were cleaner than that,” said the former official, referring to an extrajudicial killing, or state-sponsored killing outside the formal legal system of a country. “He stepped into it [the shot] for [expletive deleted] sake.”

But appearances are deceiving, countered the lawyer whom the Capitol officer has hired to defend himself. In an RCI interview, Washington attorney Mark Schamel said his client did, in fact, warn Babbitt and other rioters to keep back — and that he did so firmly and repeatedly.

“It’s a false narrative that he issued no verbal commands or warnings,” Schamel said. “He was screaming, ‘Stay back! Stay back! Don’t come in here!’” He added that witness statements back him up. Schamel explained the lieutenant’s commands were not picked up on the video because it was recorded on the other side of the doors where dozens of rioters were shouting and banging against the doors and drowning out his words. And he said his client could not be seen yelling out the instructions because his mouth was covered by a mask he wore as part of COVID-19 protections.

It’s not clear if the officer in fact warned the marauders breaching the barricade that he would shoot if they did not heed his commands. However, his service weapon — a .40-caliber Glock semiautomatic handgun — was visibly drawn. Some of the rioters spotted it through the lobby windows and shouted: “There’s a gun!” followed by, “He’s got a gun!”

Schamel said his client, who received his training primarily at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers in Glynco, Ga., was acting to protect himself and lawmakers from harm.

“He was acting within his training,” he said. “Lethal force is appropriate if the situation puts you or others in fear of imminent bodily harm.”

Hm. Good to know. So, should an old white male like myself shoot and kill a black intruder breaking into his home late at night, I can expect to be likewise hailed as a “hero” by the authorities in my home state—a state, mind you, which does NOT have a “castle doctrine” law in effect? A state which, on the contrary, mandates that a hypothetical victim of violent criminal assault must jump through quite a few flaming legal hoops before being allowed to defend his very life against his assailant(s) without being subject to judicial persecution as a “murderer” for the rest of his life?

No need to answer; we all already know well enough that lethal force is “appropriate” only if “the situation” puts panicked, trigger-happy LEOs at risk of wetting themselves, and only if the victims are Trump supporting dissidents.

He pointed out that the officer was the potential last line of defense between the rioters and dozens of members of Congress and staffers, who he said had yet to be escorted out of the House chamber by security at the time. (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other VIPs had already been evacuated.)

The Speaker’s Lobby is a hallway that runs behind the chamber and leads to exits on both ends, so the doors where the mob had gathered, which were manned by the lieutenant, served as a strategic chokepoint. Before they arrived, the officer had piled tables, chairs and other furniture from the hallway in front of the doors to create a barricade.

“He stopped them from coming through to the hallway and into the chamber,” Schamel said. “He stopped a potential massacre.”

Gee, hyperbolize much, you ambulance-chasing drama queen?

Pantloads more of such overwrought, self-serving twaddle in the linked article, which frankly I found so repulsive I threw up my hands before I’d gagged my way through much more than half of the thing. Even so, a few things are infuriatingly clear:

• That Ashli Babbitt was indeed needlessly murdered by a Deep State thug in monstrously disproportionate response to an act of minor criminal trespass which merited nothing more severe than a citation and a small fine
• That her grieving loved ones will be denied the cold comfort of ever seeing justice done for her barbarous execution
• That the dishonest slander of both Babbitt personally as a “deadly threat” and the January 6th protest in general as a “riot,” a “massacre,” an “insurrection” undertaken by “white supremacists” and/or “domestic terrorists” will continue, for as long as TPTB find it useful to do so
• That there will never be any meaningful consequences suffered by the perpetrators of an entire summer’s worth of actually dangerous, deadly, and destructive rioting, all of which was openly and unashamedly endorsed at the time by the self-same ProPol filthbags now striking indignant poses and spluttering in horror over January 6th

As I said: infuriating. But if Ashli’s scurrilous killer is forced to remain in hiding, to live in abject terror of being identified or exposed until the frabjous day he drops dead—hey, I’m good with it, myself. It ain’t much, and is by no stretch a satisfying outcome. But if it’s all we can get, at least for now…well, I’ll take it, in hopes of something better to come along someday.

Update! Much, much more from Gateway Pundit, including photos that reveal the murder to be a blithering incompetent—finger in the trigger well, muzzle-sweeping everybody around him, etc—as well as self-contradictory statements showing him to be an unusually inept liar. If this oaf is typical of Mordor OTP law enforcement, then Mordor OTP is in seriously dire straits.