In the year since Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot trying to force her way further inside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, a chorus of conservative voices have cast her as a patriot and a martyr, and her death as an unjust assassination.
A new narrative circulating online takes those claims further. "Ashli Babbitt tried to stop antifa false flag on Jan. 6," said the title of one video posted Jan. 19, 2022.
"She was trying to stop those people from busting up the place, and then had to flee from them," the speaker in the video said. "That’s why she went through the window, and then got shot, got assassinated by that f------- rent-a-cop."
The video offered a conspiratorial retelling of what transpired during one of day’s most scrutinized moments, when Babbitt attempted to climb through the shattered window of a door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby, where lawmakers were being evacuated. It relied on an interpretation of Jan. 6 footage from a right-wing outlet that made unsubstantiated claims about Babbitt’s words, actions and frame of mind in the moments before she died.
In reality, there is no clear evidence that Babbitt was fighting to halt the mob — or that the attack was a false flag spurred on by antifa.
The insurrection was carried out by supporters of then-President Donald Trump, many of them whipped up by his false claims of a stolen election. The officer who fired the bullet that killed Babbitt — Lt. Michael Byrd, a Capitol Police officer for 28...
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