(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The mother of Ashli Babbitt, who was murdered by Capitol Police on Jan. 6, 2021, was arrested Friday while marching in remembrance of her daughter.
Micki Witthoeft was one of the dozens of protestors to return to the Capitol on the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6 protests. She was seen being handcuffed and placed in a police car, apparently for marching in the street and disobeying orders to go back to the sidewalk.
“You’re arresting Ashli Babbitt’s mother!” a fellow protestor told police. “You murdered her [daughter] inside the Capitol. Now you’re arresting her.”
A police officer responded by ordering the Jan. 6 protestors to return to the sidewalk, telling them they’d be arrested, too, if they refused.
“You’re blocking traffic,” the police officer said.
Babbitt, a 14-year Air Force veteran, was shot and killed by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd while crawling through a window in the Capitol building during the Jan. 6 protests.
Byrd has claimed that he acted with “the utmost courage” and “saved countless lives.”
However, Judicial Watch obtained records in November 2021 that calls Byrd’s assertion into question. Those records include an audio interview, with disguised voices, that the DC Police conducted with Byrd after the shooting and cell phone video from immediately after the shooting in which police officers failed to provide Babbitt prompt medical care.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said at the time that Byrd’s “reckless decision” to shoot Babbitt without warning placed nearby officers and citizens “in harm’s way” and “right in the line of fire.”
Judicial Watch also received photos from inside the Capitol building after shooting, of Byrd, his hands, his gun, and of a utility knife that investigators said they found in Babbitt’s pocket.
“These recordings and photos provide dramatic, first-hand evidence that the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt was unjustified,” Fitton said in November 2021. “It is disturbing that neither the Pelosi Congress nor the Biden/Garland DOJ took [any] action over this needless death.”
Judicial Watch obtained these records as the result of a May 2021 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, following failure of the DC Police and Office of the Chief Medical Examinerto comply with the group’s FOIA requests.
Earlier records obtained by Judicial Watch found that other officers at the scene did not see a weapon in Babbitt’s hands prior to the shooting and that they did not hear Byrd issue any verbal commands prior to the shooting.
In one interview, an officer claimed that before the shooting he “didn’t see anything in her hands.”
The DOJ, FBI and Metropolitan Police all cleared Byrd of wrongdoing in the shooting.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
