by Jack Cashill at Jack’s Substack
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,…
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