Incredibly, U.S. Capitol Police captain Michael Byrd, the cop who shot J6 protester Ashli Babbitt, appears to have been extorting the Democrats for favors, including a promotion. Even more incredibly, leading House Democrats have obliged him. Much of this bizarre saga Rep. Barry Lourdermilk (R-GA) has documented in a detailed letter to U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) chief Thomas Manger.
What is undeniable is that Byrd shot and killed an unarmed woman of a different race. Undeniable, too, is that no police officer in recent memory has received anything like the treatment proffered to Byrd for a comparable shooting. Indeed, only in the DIE-infested miasma of the D.C. swamp does Byrd’s story make any sense at all.
In the way of background, Ashli Babbitt entered the Capitol alone on the Senate side through a broken window at 2:23 P.M. on January 6, 2021. Upon entering, Babbitt climbed over a velvet rope to honor the walking lane designated for visitors. She had less than 20 minutes left to live.
Still alone, Babbitt continued to explore the Capitol. At 2:36, citizen-journalist Tayler Hansen, camera rolling, followed her down a long, narrow corridor leading to the Speaker’s Lobby. Guarding the lobby doors were three USCP officers. A 14-year Air Force veteran with military police experience, Babbitt identified with the officers and joked with them.
Within a minute or two, a trailing crowd of roughly thirty people quickly filled up the corridor in front of the lobby doors. One provocateur reached between the officers and began punching the glass panels. Babbitt’s police training kicked in. “Call f—— back-up!” she shouted at the feckless officers as they stood in place with their backs to the doors, doing nothing.
When the officers inexplicably abandoned their post, the provocateur busted out a window pane with a helmet. After yelling for the window-breaker to stop, Babbitt slugged the man in the face and knocked his glasses off. Fleeing the madness, she hopped into the window frame, now fully free of glass, a feat only a person as small as she could have managed.
On the far side of the barricaded lobby doors stood Lt. Byrd, his arm outstretched, gun in hand. Other armed officers hovered nearby in the narrow Speaker’s Lobby. No members of Congress remained in the lobby, and only a handful of Republicans, all men, remained on the adjacent House floor.
How Lt. Byrd came to be there in the role of incident commander is something of mystery. As Loudermilk documents in detail, Byrd had a career-long record of reckless behavior. He shot at a stolen vehicle, got cited for “conduct unbecoming an officer” after a racial confrontation, left his service weapon unattended in a public bathroom, later failed a routine background check for a shotgun purchase, and then failed the USCP shotgun training course.
The IRS seems to have treated Byrd preferentially as well. As licensed private investigator Susan Daniels has reported, a year before the shooting, the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County slapped Byrd with a $56,000 federal tax lien. The case remains open.
Once Babbitt appeared in the window frame, Byrd gave her no chance to explain her motives. Without a word of warning, he shot and killed her. Once shot, she instantly fell backward onto the marble floor of the corridor. Within a minute of shooting Babbitt, a panicky Byrd made an astonishing radio call:
405B. We got shots fired in the lobby. We got shots fired in the lobby of the House Chamber. Shots are being fired at us and we’re sh, uhh, prepared to fire back at them. We have guns drawn. Please don’t leave that end. Don’t leave that end.
Less than a minute later, Byrd made a follow-up call: “405B. We got an injured person. I believe that person was shot.” Believe? Indifferent to the possibility that the shooting had been recorded, Byrd reflexively created his own reality, a reality in which “insurrectionists” were shooting at him.
Avoiding punishment this time would seem unlikely. Several witnesses recorded this textbook “bad shoot.” As the lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch on behalf of Ashli’s husband, Aaron Babbitt, makes clear, Byrd violated just about every Capitol Police directive on the use of deadly force.
Masked and out of uniform, Byrd did not identify himself as a police officer, did not give Babbitt verbal orders to stop, and did not give her a chance to comply. He did not “diligently assess” the situation before firing. He never considered any other defensive tactics or compliance techniques. He disregarded the presence of seven other police officers in his line of fire. Most critically, Babbitt did not pose “an imminent danger of death or serious injury.” When Byrd fired, he did not even know she was a female.
To Byrd’s good fortune, the videos showed the masked lieutenant only for a second. This gave his patrons time to hide the still unidentified Byrd from public view until they came up with a public relations strategy. For six months, the USCP put Byrd and a pet up in a “distinguished visitor suite” at the “Presidential Inn” on the grounds of Joint Base Andrews. Not until August 2021 did the Capitol Police publicly identify him.
In the meantime, the USCP rewarded him. In his letter, Loudermilk questioned why the USCP promoted Byrd to captain after the shooting and provided him with any number of perks. These included an unrestricted $36,000 bonus as part of a retention agreement in August 2021 and assistance in setting up a GoFundMe that raised over $164,000.
Loudermilk also wondered why, when Byrd failed to honor his “telework” agreement for two summer months, the USCP paid him anyhow. Wrote Loudermilk in a massive understatement, “Based on the above information, it appears USCP treated Byrd more favorably than other officers.”
The media played their role in Byrd’s elevation. Introducing Byrd to the public in August 2021 with an exclusive interview was NBC’s Lester Holt, perhaps the most empathetic black newsman in the business. As Holt repeated twice, the USCP, the Metropolitan D.C. P.D., the FBI, and the DOJ had all cleared Byrd of any wrongdoing. They cleared him, Holt failed to note, without interviewing the eyewitnesses. As a case in point, no official ever talked to Taylor Hansen or asked to see his essential video evidence despite Hansen’s repeated attempts to reach out.
Nearly four years after the shooting, the details of Byrd’s extraordinary treatment have begun to surface. As John Solomon reports, House Democrats pressured the USCP to provide Byrd special financial assistance as well as the promotion from lieutenant to captain.
“He is very upset about how he is being treated. He wants us to figure this out and now,” a top aide to Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), wrote to the USCP in November 2021. Writes Solomon, “The records show that pressure also came from then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s staff and from then–Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.”
There is no doubt that leading Democrats overcame their animus against “killer cops” to reward Byrd, but the question remains why they did so. The answer may lie in the interview Byrd did with Holt.
Holt began by asking Byrd why USCP brass withheld his name as long as they did. Byrd responded, “Threats.”
Holt followed with the inevitable: “Racist threats?”
Long before internet sleuths even deduced Byrd’s identity, the NBC audience was led to believe that Byrd was facing threats because of his race. Never mind that he had shot and killed an unarmed Trump-supporter with impunity. Byrd was now being positioned not just as hero, but better still, as a victim of MAGA America.
Byrd understood the game. He had been playing it all his life. He proved entirely willing to exploit to his status as victim. And he was not just any victim. He was a victim of a “lethal insurrection.”
A clever guy, Byrd knew he was home free. He understood his role as protector of the January 6 narrative. In that role, he felt free to lie to Holt — the more grandiose the lie, the better for the narrative. “I know that day I saved countless lives,” he told Holt shamelessly.
Among those Byrd claimed to have saved were members of Congress who were “disabled” or very nearly so. “Some of those individuals were in the lobby with me,” said Byrd. In fact, there were no members of Congress in the lobby, let alone disabled ones, but who would dare question this hero/victim?
If January 6 was to have a martyr, Democrats would not allow it to be Ashli Babbitt. Instead, aided and abetted by the media, they chose the man who shot her. Ashli’s mom wasn’t buying. “I do hate that son of a b—-,” said Micki Witthoeft, “not because he’s black, but because he killed my child.”
Jack Cashill’s newest book, Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6, is available in all formats.
Pexels.
Jesus Christ is King
Comments are closed.