INSTAPUNDIT READERS HAVE KNOWN THIS FOR MONTHS BUT NOW IT’S OFFICIAL: Exclusive: Police Lieutenant Who Killed January 6 Capitol Rioter Ashli Babbitt Finally Identified.
For more than seven months, the U.S. Capitol Police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed protester climbing through a broken window in a hallway of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, has remained anonymous.
Though his name was known to U.S. Capitol Police, congressional staffers and federal investigations, no one would divulge it. The secrecy fueled months of online speculation.
Babbitt’s family alleged a coverup.
With reason. The officer is Lt. Michael Byrd, a Capitol Police officer with a checkered record of gun mishaps even before the shooting:
Byrd is a controversial figure with a record of mishandling firearms, including once leaving a loaded pistol in a Congressional Visitor Center bathroom. Roberts said Byrd’s decision to fire his weapon on January 6 indicated his unfitness for duty.
“If I was a congressman, I’d be very concerned about him carrying a gun around me,” he said.
Typically, police officers who shoot civilians are named publicly. But the January 6 riot and the riots that erupted after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, divided the country along political, class, and racial lines—making officials cautious about revealing the name of a Black police officer who killed a white protester.
Roberts said race was “clearly a factor” in the decision to shield Byrd from public scrutiny.
“It’s something that has to be considered, because it’s just a clear pattern in the United States,” he said. “A white cop kills a Black individual? Their name is out there within a day. It’s all public. And look, a police officer is a public official. There should not be any exception for this.”
U.S. Capitol Police officials, police union representatives and government officials had repeatedly claimed that disclosing the officer’s identity would put his life and his wife’s in danger—and subject them to racial slurs. Lt. Byrd’s family roots are in Jamaica, according to one of his neighbors.
After not naming Byrd publicly for months, Babbitt’s lawyer said he became skeptical when he learned Wednesday that the officer was set to appear with Lester Holt in an NBC News broadcast the following day—and that NBC had already taped the interview.
They had a narrative to defend, and they didn’t want the public thinking that the ruling class’s protectors were accountable to anyone but the ruling class.