HOW? Preliminary Investigators Decline to Recommend Criminal Charges in Police Shooting of Unarmed Trump Supporter Ashli Babbit
Richard Moorhead
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Preliminary investigators aren’t recommending that criminal charges be filed in regards to the January 6th shooting of Ashli Babbitt, a pro-Trump protestor who was shot and killed inside the US Capitol during the raucous protest that day.
The Justice Department, which has the jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute crimes that occur at the Capitol, is currently investigating the circumstances of the shooting. Sources familiar with the matter indicated to the Wall Street Journal that federal officials are not recommending criminal charges, although the DOJ is still investigating.
Eyewitness accounts of the police shooting indicate that Babbitt, a 35-year old Air Force veteran from California with 14 years of service, had been climbing through a broken window to an area of the Capitol protected from riotous trespassers during the raucous protest. Babbitt was shot once in the head. It’s unclear if Babbitt was so much as even warned by the plainclothes police officer who shot her.
The officer that fired on Babbit has also been unidentified to the public, a highly unusual circumstance in a police shooting. Some have speculated that the officer was attached to then-Vice President Mike Pence’s Secret Service detail.
Several law enforcement officers were even standing behind a small crowd of riotous protestors as Babbit was shot, raising even more questions as to the use of lethal force. The justification of the shooting has been largely ignored by the mainstream media, despite extremely shaky grounds for opening fire on a riotous protestors who trespassed and broke windows while unarmed. Even left-wing critics of American law enforcement have raised some doubts about the shooting of Babbitt.
I am going to say something wildly unpopular in my circles.
I've watched every video I can find of the Capitol Police shooting Trump supporter, Ashli Babbit.
It's a bad shooting.
3 police officers were behind her and should've stopped her themselves.
She was unarmed.
— Shaun King (@shaunking) January 8, 2021
If the Department of Justice ultimately declines to bring charges in the shooting without providing an explanation with new information, many will be left with no choice but to conclude that the federal government is systematically biased in the application of lethal force.
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