Media organizations have perpetuated the narrative pushed by authorities about Ashli Babbitt—an unarmed veteran who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer on Jan. 6, 2021—and are trying to hide truthful and positive information about who she was, said her husband Aaron Babbitt.
The most blatant example of this is how Twitter and Google hid information and positive comments related to Ashli and himself, said Babbit.
“There was always this grayed-out area at the bottom that said ‘graphic content, click here to proceed,’ and I was terrified to click on that after what I was seeing,” said Babbitt.
On one particular night, he said, he'd had enough. Determined not to let the hateful message bother him, he decided to see what was under the grayed-out area.
“I clicked on that graphic content warning. There was like a hundred positive messages that Twitter was hiding under ‘graphic sensitive content,’” said Babbitt.
Babbitt said he and his family and in-laws have been getting hateful messages and death threats since his wife was killed. His business was ruined because frightened employees quit, and his shop’s Yelp page was filled with more hateful comments.
Referring to internet trolls, Babbitt said, “They never go outside in the light of day. They don’t know how to operate, sit down and actually talk to a person face to face. They literally think their life operates behind that computer screen and they can say whatever they want.”
Babbitt said he had a similar experience with YouTube when he typed “June 7 Aaron Babbitt Greg Kelly” in the search bar and tried to find the video of an interview he did with Kelly on Newsmax.
The video in which Ashli Babbitt was killed would come to the top of the results, and Aaron Babbitt would have to search through three pages of results. He said none of the videos of Ashli’s death were blocked with a content warning. But when he finally found the video of the Newsmax interview, Babbitt said YouTube labeled the video as containing “graphic content” and prompted him to confirm he was over 18 years old to view it.
“Saying good things about Ashli is ‘graphic sensitive content,’” Babbitt said.
The truth about Ashli was that she loved her country, her husband said. She was a tomboy who loved contact sports and animals, and would light up any room she walked into, he said. She was petite but loud and everyone who knew her loved her.
“I mean, we have friends in Mexico that are missing her,” said Babbitt.
She was active on Twitter and followed politics insofar as she loved President Donald Trump and his America First agenda, Babbitt said. Like many Americans, Ashli was tired of career politicians and wanted the country to be run the way a business needs to be run.
At the last minute near the end of a two-week vacation over the Christmas holiday, Ashli decided that she wanted to hear Trump speak at the Capitol, so she flew to Washington.
“There was no planning leading up to it,” said Aaron Babbitt.
Ashli was a U.S. Air Force veteran and a member of the D.C. National Guard.
“She knows that area very well, so it wasn’t a fear for me, having her go there alone. I had more of a fear because I knew that there was a high potential for bad actors to be involved in this thing,” he said.
The chaos had already started before Ashli arrived inside the Capitol building, because she stayed for Trump’s entire speech and had to walk 30 minutes from the speech to the building, Babbitt said. When she arrived, there were people already inside the Capitol, he said.
Aaron Babbitt had no early signs that Ashli was in any kind of trouble. He only got the news from a distant acquaintance that a woman had been shot and that it might be Ashli. Only after turning on the TV did he confirm it was her, Babbitt said.
“And the very first image that I saw was Ashli laying on the ground with blood, blood coming out of her mouth and nose. I hoped and prayed that it was a rubber round,” said Babbitt
Frantically, he phoned all the hospitals in the D.C. Metro area but to no avail, he said. It was only later that he realized the hospital had admitted her under her biological father’s last name, which she hadn’t used in many years.
As Babbitt was making the calls, he heard a voice on the TV saying that the woman who had been shot inside the Capitol was dead.
“I can’t describe what that feeling is like. Your whole body’s just evacuated, it’s collapsed,” he said.
After Ashli’s death, Babbitt said, he was never contacted by Capitol Police, only by the D.C. Metro Police Department. His own congressman never contacted him either, he said. Only the congressman in the district where his business is located, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), contacted him.
In a video discovered in January 2022, it appears that before Ashli was shot, she was getting upset and urging the crowd to calm down as she realized there was something bad happening.
“I could hear the panic in her voice like, ‘Stop! No!' It’s starting to get high pitched, too. So yeah, I think she realized she was in a bad spot,” said Babbitt.
After seeing and hearing all the video and audio, Babbitt said he believes the force that was used on his wife was unwarranted and that she was taken by surprise. “It’s not legal. It’s murder,” he said
Aaron Babbitt told The Epoch Times that he will be filing a civil suit against the Capitol Police over the killing of his wife.
In a statement to The Epoch Times, the U.S. Capitol Police said it was not aware of any lawsuit filed against the department related to the shooting of Ashli Babbitt.
“Although we cannot comment on potential litigation, we want people to have the facts,” the department stated.
“OPR determined the officer’s conduct was lawful and within Department policy, which says an officer may use deadly force only when the officer reasonably believes that action is in the defense of human life, including the officer’s own life, or in the defense of any person in immediate danger of serious physical injury. The officer’s actions were consistent with the officer’s training and USCP policies and procedures.”
Soon after his wife’s death, Babbitt said, the police officer who shot Ashli was hailed as a hero, and he was interviewed on TV to proclaim his innocence.
However, Babbitt said he feels differently.
“He claimed himself to be a victim. It was the worst interview I’ve ever seen,” he said
Byrd shot Ashli Babbitt as she tried to climb through a broken window outside the U.S. House of Representatives Speaker’s Lobby on Jan. 6, 2021.
Aaron Babbitt said the mainstream media tried to bury the story and paint Ashli as an insurrectionist because the authorities know her killing was unjustified.
