Former President Donald Trump said he spoke with the family of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who was shot and killed by an unidentified officer during the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, and demanded “justice” over the incident.
Babbitt, a 35-year-old Trump supporter, was shot while she tried to breach a door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby as Capitol Police evacuated members of Congress during the riot, according to video of the events. She was transported to Washington Hospital Center, where she died from her injuries. The officer who pulled the trigger has not been identified, and federal authorities have divulged little information regarding the shooting.
“I spoke to the wonderful mother and devoted husband of Ashli Babbitt, who was murdered at the hands of someone who should never have pulled the trigger of his gun,” the 45th president said in his latest tweemail statement. “We know who he is. If that happened to the ‘other side,’ there would be riots all over America and yet, there are far more people represented by Ashli, who truly loved America, than there are on the other side. The Radical Left haters cannot be allowed to get away with this. There must be justice!”
ASHLI BABBITT FAMILY LAWYER SAYS OFFICER KILLER HER IN ‘AMBUSH’ WITHOUT WARNING
Babbitt was captured on footage making her way through broken glass as a number of armed police officers stacked up against the opposite side of the door. Some people have asked whether a verbal warning was issued before the trigger was pulled.
“It’s not debatable,” Babbitt’s attorney, Terry Roberts, told RealClearInvestigations earlier in the month. “There was no warning.”
However, Roberts’s claims have been disputed by Mark Schamel, a lawyer for the unidentified officer.
“It’s a false narrative that he issued no verbal commands or warnings,” Schamel previously told the outlet. “He was screaming, ‘Stay back! Stay back! Don’t come in here!'”
Schamel said his client’s shouts could not be heard in video footage of the incident because his mouth was covered with a mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19. He also noted the videos were taken on the other side of the doors, where the rioters were making a lot of noise, and he has witness statements to back that up.
But Roberts insists video footage his team has reviewed shows officers did not react as if they heard the shouts on their side of the doors.
“Those other officers were within earshot. If he’s yelling, they certainly aren’t showing any reaction to it,” he said. “If he was giving any kind of warning, why didn’t they react?”
In April, the Justice Department declined to charge the officer in Babbitt’s death after the government body determined “there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution.” Still, many high-profile GOP figures, including Trump, have remained vocal in their demands to unmask the officer responsible.
Last month, Trump claimed to know the identity of the policeman, though he did not disclose it to the public.
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“People are being treated unbelievably unfairly, when you look at people in prison, and nothing happens to antifa, and they burn down cities and killed people,” Trump said during a press conference announcing a class-action lawsuit against Facebook and Twitter. “There were no guns in the Capitol … except for the gun that shot Ashli Babbitt, and nobody knows who that man were [sic].”
“If that were the opposite way, that man would be all over — he would be the most well known — and I believe I can say ‘man’ because I believe I know exactly who it is — but he would be the most well-known person in this country, in the world,” Trump added.
