FBI opened Ashli Babbitt investigation within a week of her Jan. 6 death
FBI investigation listed Babbitt’s ‘potential violations of federal law’ 8 days after she was killed by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.
By Joseph M. Hanneman The Epoch Times || April 10, 2024
Ashli Babbitt, the California Air Force veteran fatally shot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was investigated by the FBI for “potential violations” of federal law including felony rioting and civil disorder, new records reveal.
The FBI posted a 69-page PDF document with heavily redacted reports from an investigation of Babbitt opened on Jan. 14, 2021, more than a week after she died from a single gunshot fired by U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.
A summary sheet dated Jan. 7—before the investigation was formally opened—said “two subjects were shot” at the Capitol on Jan. 6 “with one fatal injury.” The reference to a second gunshot injury is unclear since Babbitt was the only person reported to have been shot at the Capitol that day.
The investigation document was posted to the website of The Vault, the FBI’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) library. The investigation of Babbitt was opened by the FBI’s San Diego Field Office.
‘Why open a case on a dead person to allege crimes she may have been charged with? Makes no sense at all.’
Its public release was a response to Judicial Watch Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice, a FOIA lawsuit filed on Sept. 20, 2021. Each page in the PDF was stamped “21-cv-2462,” the federal case number for the suit.
“We are reviewing the documents now, which I understand were produced in response to our FOIA lawsuits,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, told The Epoch Times in an April 10 email.
Since Babbitt could not be charged with a crime—the report makes clear that she died on Jan. 6—it’s not clear why the document lists four federal statutes under “potential violations of federal law.” The justification section of the document is redacted.
The potential violations list includes “Title 18 U.S.C §2101 – Riots,” a five-year felony charge that has not been brought against any of the 1,387 people arrested by the FBI since Jan. 6.
Other “potential violations” included felony civil disorder (18 U.S.C §231), misdemeanor charges of unlawful entry (18 U.S.C §1752a), and disorderly conduct/injuries to property (40 U.S.C §5104), according to a Jan. 14, 2021, document included in the PDF.
‘Unlawfully entered’
A criminal inquiry was started “based on photographic and video evidence that Ashli Elizabeth Babbitt unlawfully entered the United States Capitol Building, a restricted building, on 6 January 2021,” the report said.
Babbitt “was fatally shot by police as she attempted to leap through the broken window of a door inside the Capitol,” the document stated.
Video shot by at least four journalists in the hallway showed Babbitt climbing into the window frame but footage did not show her jumping.
Garret O’Boyle, a suspended FBI special agent and whistleblower who testified before the U.S. House in 2023, said he found it “very strange” that the FBI started a criminal investigation based on the alleged Jan. 6 actions of the deceased Babbitt.
“This makes no sense,” Mr. O’Boyle told The Epoch Times. “Why open a case on a dead person to allege crimes she may have been charged with? Makes no sense at all.”
Mr. O’Boyle and Steve Friend—a former FBI special agent who blew the whistle on what he called the bureau’s manipulation of case statistics to push a domestic terror narrative—said such a probe might make sense if it was about a conspiracy involving associates.
Babbitt traveled to Washington alone on Jan. 5. She attended former President Donald Trump’s speech at the Ellipse and then walked to the Capitol. She was alone that day, not part of a protest group, Babbitt’s widower, Aaron Babbitt, previously told The Epoch Times.
Friend told The Epoch Times that an investigation of Babbitt’s actions on Jan. 6 is “completely ridiculous” considering she is dead. Babbitt, 35, of San Diego, was shot at 2:44 p.m. on Jan. 6 in the hallway outside of the House speaker’s lobby on the second level of the Capitol.
Byrd shot her in the left anterior shoulder below the clavicle just as she emerged from a broken glass side panel of the Speaker’s Lobby entrance. She was pronounced dead at a Washington hospital at 3:15 p.m. that day.
Byrd has said he fired the shot because he feared his life was in danger. A $30 million wrongful-death lawsuit, filed by Babbitt’s estate and Aaron Babbitt, however, said the shooting was an “ambush murder.”
An investigation of the fatal shooting conducted by the Metropolitan Police Department also included information on laws possibly broken by Babbitt, but the June 2021 MPD report called them “violations that led to police contact.”
‘Informant video?’
The FBI document detailed digital copies of four videos of the fatal shooting. The description of the video files was included on a form the FBI uses to document information from informants.
It’s not clear if the video files were provided or shot by an informant or “confidential human source” as the FBI calls them.
The report makes reference to tips about Babbitt that came through the FBI’s Capitol violence website, although the details in each instance are redacted.
It also includes details from an FBI interview of a man who served with Babbitt in the U.S. Air Force who said she “loved her family and loved her country.”
The heavily redacted report indicates that FBI special agents interviewed or otherwise received information from tipsters, including on Jan. 7, 11, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, and 28. The details of the tips are redacted in the report.
The man “was frustrated by media portrayals of Babbitt as being associated with white nationalists, which was not accurate,” the report said.
On April 15, 2021, agents interviewed someone who knew Babbitt from her time in the U.S. Air Force. The individual described Babbitt as “very outgoing, opinionated, loud, very intelligent, loyal, sweet, very loving and caring.”
“At times, Babbitt was not a fan of her chain of command and made her views known,” the man said, according to the FBI document. “Babbitt was a leader rather than a follower and liked being her own boss. Consequently, she was happy running her pool company in California,” the report said. “Babbitt loved her family and loved her country.”
(Photo courtesy of Micki Witthoeft)
The man judged that Babbitt “likely recognized” that entering the Capitol was unauthorized and “knew the risk,” the report said. “In that situation, [he] assessed that Babbitt followed the crowd and felt secure being amongst like-minded individuals.”
The man “judged that her leadership nature may have taken hold when she attempted to enter a new room within the Capitol where she was shot,” the report said.
Babbitt “likely did not know the risk of passing through the window,” the man said. Babbitt would never “go after someone physically,” he added.
The man told agents he was not very familiar with Babbitt’s personal views, saying she was “not political.” He said he knew she had voted for President Barack Obama.
The man “was frustrated by media portrayals of Babbitt as being associated with white nationalists, which was not accurate,” the report said.
It is expected that the FBI will be releasing more Babbitt investigative records. Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit against the FBI on Jan. 17 in the U.S. District Court in San Diego, demanding all of the records it has on Aaron and Ashli Babbitt.
Babbitt’s estate and Aaron Babbitt filed separate FOIA requests with the FBI in late February 2023. Those requests were denied, and an appeal did not yield the production of any records, the lawsuit said.
The dozens of pages of records released by the FBI on April 7 are as significant for what they don’t say as the information they reveal.
Nowhere in the document does Byrd’s name appear, or any notation that there was an ongoing use-of-force investigation on Byrd. The report merely states Babbitt “was fatally shot.”
Various videos that surfaced in the wake of Jan. 6 show that Babbitt did not engage in rioting, violence, or vandalism at the Capitol. She berated three Capitol police officers, who were guarding the doors of the Speaker’s Lobby, for not calling for backup when violence broke out in the hallway.
Shortly after Zachary Alam used a riot helmet to smash out glass panes in the doors and side panel, Babbitt spun him around and landed a left hook to his nose. She then climbed into the window panel where she was shot.