Actions of Cop Cleared in Killing of Ashli Babbitt on January 6 Never Probed
As if suffering the inane indignity of listening to political opportunists rattle on about the false narrative of the January 6 protests being the greatest threat to our nation since the Cuban missile crisis wasn’t enough, now comes news that the murder of Ashli Babbitt on that fateful day hasn’t ever been truly investigated.
US Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, identified as the shooter – not because the US Capitol Police (USCP), DC Metro Police (DCMPD), or even the Department of Justice (DoJ) revealed his name in an official statement, but because it came out in a media investigation – told a national news anchor that he’d been investigated by several agencies and exonerated for his actions that day.
“There’s an investigative process [and] I was cleared by the DoJ, and FBI and [the DC] Metropolitan Police,” he told the anchor, saying the USCP also cleared him of wrongdoing. Byrd was not disciplined for the shooting.
But information stemming from an upcoming wrongful death lawsuit by Babbitt’s family against Byrd and the USCP reveal that Byrd was cleared of any wrongdoing without actually being interviewed by investigators.
“He didn’t provide any statement to [criminal] investigators and they didn’t push him to make a statement,” Terry Roberts, the Babbitt family’s attorney, said in an interview. “It’s astonishing how skimpy his investigative file is.”
Roberts’ record of events is corroborated by a January 2021 DCMPD internal affairs report, which notes Byrd “declined to provide a statement.” When queried about an interview of Byrd, a DCMPD spokeswoman confirmed Byrd did not cooperate with internal affairs agents or FBI agents, who jointly investigated the case.
Additionally, DCMPD communications director, Kristen Metzger, revealed Byrd, “didn’t give a statement while under the US Attorney’s Office investigation.”
Stunningly, the USCP concluded in August 2021 that “[Byrd’s] conduct was lawful and within department policy.” In April 2021, four months after the shooting, Byrd was cleared of all criminal wrongdoing by the DoJ, which refused to impanel a grand jury, an extraordinary departure from lethal police-shooting cases involving unarmed citizens.
The Babbitt’s, through their family attorney, are questioning how investigators could find that Byrd acted in self-defense and properly followed his training procedures – including issuing warnings before discharging his weapon, since he both refused to talk about it while the investigation was open and has admitted publicly that he never actually saw Babbitt brandish a weapon.
Documents revealed through a FOIA request initiated by Judicial Watch indicate eyewitnesses – including three police officers at the scene – told investigators they did not hear Byrd give Babbitt any verbal warnings prior to firing.
The Babbitt family has maintained that the so-called “investigation” amounted to a “coverup” of misconduct by the officer, executed in a disingenuous manner under political pressure.
Noted use-of-force experts say serious questions exist about the propriety of Byrd’s decision to shoot, especially with regard to the assessment that Babbitt was an imminent threat.
Why This Is Important
Important to keep in mind as you consider these facts is that the US Capitol Police force exists under the authority of the Capitol Police Board, which answers to the House and Senate appropriations committees, the House administration committee, and the Senate rules committee. In each of these cases – where these entities are concerned, Speaker of the House, US Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-MY), have – and had – a great deal of influence.
That said, we all need to ask ourselves how one of the most high-profile shootings in contemporary history – to rival presidential assassinations and attempts, and the shootings of Lee Harvey Oswald and John Lennon – was allowed to be swept under the rug so blatantly by three authoritative agencies: the US Capitol Police, the DC Metropolitan Police, and the United States Justice Department.
Giving the benefit of the doubt a significant amount of leeway, it could begrudgingly be accepted if one law enforcement body booted an investigation into a shooting. But it becomes unacceptably obvious that nefarious actors were at play when three law enforcement agencies fail to execute a meaningful interview of someone who took another human being’s life.
This outrage only becomes more potent when you consider this was a capital murder of an unarmed civilian by a police officer. In any other situation and at any other time, when these facts and players are included, there would be exhaustive investigations into every second and action by both the shooter and the victim.
Yet here we are. As opportunistic politicians took to the microphones to recall how threatened and frightened they were on that day, hunkered down in offices, fearing for their lives from a raucous but completely unarmed group of protesters, Ashli Babbitt’s body was being cremated – against her family’s wishes, and her murderer was being exonerated. Why? How?
Far-Left activists and political opportunists have monopolized the streets of our major cities for years, terrorizing law-abiding citizens and costing businesses their livelihoods; marching and demanding change where the use of force and law enforcement is concerned. We are told that law enforcement officers need more training in the use of deadly force and that thorough investigations into each police shooting are non-negotiable.
It is impossible to go a week without hearing some race-baiter, standing under the banner of the falsely-based and opportunistic banner of Black Lives Matter, spewing uncorroborated allegations using untruthful statistics while demanding a socially engineered change to the freedoms we are all supposed to be guaranteed under the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
But when a thorough investigation of the shooting of an unarmed, 5-foot, 2-inch White woman by a Black, male, police lieutenant threatens the politically crafted false narrative needed to deflect from the halt of a codified process that allows for objecting to questionable aspects of an election that determine the seat of power in the United States, the politically powerful can not be bothered with “equal justice under the law.”
There was an insurrection against the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights; against the United States on January 6, 2021. But the perpetrators weren’t on the outside looking in, they were on the inside creating the “bright shiny thing” for the “inferiors” on the outside to gawk at.
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