It was a few months ago when Donald Trump’s Justice Department reached a settlement with the family of Ashli Babbitt, the Jan. 6 rioter who was fatally shot by a police officer during the attack on the U.S. Capitol. As part of the agreement, the Republican administration announced plans to give roughly $5 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Babbitt’s relatives.
While this was impossible to defend given the weakness of the case — Thomas Manger, the outgoing chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, condemned the payment in no uncertain terms — it apparently was just part of a larger effort. As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones explained:
The U.S. Air Force is planning to offer an official military funeral for deceased insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt, who was shot during the attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to documents released by a conservative nonprofit.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, a war veteran who’s now estranged from the Republican Party, said in response to the news: “While her death is absolutely tragic and I wish it hadn’t happened, the Air Force giving her honors is in itself a dishonor.”
For those who might need a refresher, let’s revisit our earlier coverage and review how we arrived at this point.
During the Jan. 6 attack, a group of rioters reached a doorway that led to a House chamber hallway. That hallway was an escape route for lawmakers who could see the attackers through glass windows.
As regular readers know, when rioters smashed through those windows, one of the insurrectionists, Babbitt, tried to break through to enter the hallway where members of Congress were being evacuated to safety. Officers asked her to stand down. She refused. A police officer eventually fired a single shot, and the rioter later died at a hospital.
Then-Rep. Markwayne Mullin, a year before the Oklahoma Republican’s election to the Senate, was a witness to the developments and conceded publicly that the officer “did what he had to do” and “didn’t have a choice.” What’s more, the U.S. Capitol Police cleared the lieutenant who fired the shot, and the Justice Department officials who examined the matter determined that charges against the officer were not warranted.
In the months that immediately followed the attack on the Capitol, most leading Republicans, including Trump, expressed little interest in Babbitt. Her death was of great interest to the far-right fringe, but, at least initially, Trump did not see her story as worthy of attention. And he also didn’t see the need to lash out at the police officer who had protected dozens of lawmakers and their aides.
But in June 2021, Trump said that he saw Babbitt as an ally who was on his “side.” A month later, he said the rioter was “innocent.” A month after that, he accused the officer who shot her of being a “murderer.” In 2023, Trump condemned the cop as a “thug” and a “coward” who deserved to be vilified, and earlier this year, he inexplicably claimed that Babbitt was “shot for no reason whatsoever.” Two months later, Trump claimed that Babbitt “was innocently standing there” and had possibly even tried to help law enforcement by “trying to sort of hold back the crowd” when she was shot. It was as odious a lie as the president has ever told. Nevertheless, it’s against this backdrop that his administration isn’t just giving Babbitt’s family millions of dollars, it’s also giving Babbitt a military funeral — traditionally reserved for actual heroes, not insurrectionists who attacked their own country’s capitol. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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