https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...ing-capitol-riot-breaks-silence-n1277736“ Aug. 26, 2021, 5:30 PM CDT
By Rich Schapiro, Anna Schecter and Chelsea Damberg
In the chaotic minutes before he shot and killed Ashli Babbitt during the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, Lt. Michael Byrd focused his attention on the glass doors leading into the lobby of the House of Representatives chamber.
About 60 to 80 House members and staffers were holed up inside, and it was Byrd’s job to protect them.
As rioters rampaged through the Capitol, Byrd and a few other officers of the U.S. Capitol Police set up a wall of furniture outside the doors.
“Once we barricaded the doors, we were essentially trapped where we were,” Byrd said in an exclusive interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt, speaking publicly for the first time since the riot. “There was no way to retreat. No other way to get out.
[ For more watch NBC Nightly Newspeak with Lester Holt tonight from 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT. ]
“If they get through that door, they’re into the House chamber and upon the members of Congress,” added Byrd, who gave NBC News permission to use his name after authorities had declined to release
There were shouts of officers down. Screams from his colleagues under attack by rioters with chemical agents. A report that an officer’s fingertips were blown off.
“It was literally broadcast over the air,” Byrd said. “I said, ‘OK, this is getting serious.’”
This resembles a TV script more than a news report, with a lot of one-sided overplayed drama.
The fact is, NOT ONE firearm was used by Trump supporters (or by BLM/Antifa or FBI
DISGUISED as Trump suporters), not one firearm was confiscated anywhere in the Capitol by police, or anywhere in or around all of Washington Square on Jan 6th.
There were rioters making some noise, not an invading army.
And it you saw the video, there were only about 20 protesters smashing windows. Against the lying narrative, there were no serious injuries of police or legislators, there were no kidnapping or hostage attempts, there were no killed police officers.
And this trigger-happy unworthy punk Michael Byrd should no longer have a badge, and should be facing criminal prosecution. The only way they could avoid acknowledging Lt. Michael Byrd is criminally liable, is by shelving the investigation, and not even investigating what the OBVIOUS facts were: that he fired prematurely and without cause killed and UNARMED 5 foot 2" girl for no justifiable reason.
Those are the facts, despite the Newspeak spin.
Soon a horde of demonstrators arrived. Byrd, a 28-year veteran of the Capitol Police, took a defensive posture with his gun drawn as rioters smashed the glass doors.
He said he yelled repeatedly for them to get back. But the mob kept pressing forward, and then a lone rioter tried to climb through one of the doors.
What happened next was captured on video: Byrd fired one shot, striking Babbitt in the shoulder.
What was captured on video is that Byrd took careful aim for 10 or 15 seconds and fired at Ashli Babbitt from 25 feet away, who was unarmed, and no threat to Byrd or anyone else.
The police were not outnumbered, and she or any of them could have been wrestled to the ground and been handcuffed and arrested. She never even got close enough to be a threat. The coward still took careful aim and shot her from 25 feet away.
Note also that the video displays the name "JAYDEN X", which is a pseudonym for John Earle Sullivan, and with him his BLM/Antifa Salt Lake City group. Probably half of the people in that video around Ashli Babbitt are members of his group. The rushing of the offices was led by Sullivan's group. And Sullivan in another video is shown (taking off his Trump supporter costume, and putting on the costume of a news reporter, with a shouldered camera and a press badge, walking around and saying to police [i]"Heyyyy, I've seen a lot of cops hurt really bad today, I don't want that to happen to you, you guys should fall back..." Keep in mind Sullivan is the guy LEADING the mob on the other side of the wall, as he plays the neutral reporter, who is deliberately panicking the officers, while leading and stoking the opposing protestors against them.
And then later Sullivan and his group gloatingly posted the video of the shooting that he caused. A shooting videotaped from at least two angles by two different cameras, by the way.
Gleefully posted by Sullivan's BLM/Antifa group, all over Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Babbitt, 35, an Air Force veteran and ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump, fell to the ground; she died from her injuries later.
Her death became a rallying cry for the far right, which described Babbitt as a martyr. Trump himself declared that she had been murdered and suggested, falsely, that the officer who shot her worked for a high-ranking Democrat.
She choked on her own blood and bled out in a matter of minutes.
Her death became a rallying cry of excessive police force, and cover-up by the Capitol Police Department leadership. Because very suspiciously, Capitol Police didn't even disclose the name of the officer (and when has that EVER happened, in ANY other police shooting, ANYWHERE nationwide?), and quickly suppressed investigation of the shooting and closed the case, without ever revealing the facts of the case.
Likewise, the Washington DC coroner's office suppressed the facts of the officer Brian Sicknick death, despite that they did an autopsy immediately by January 8th, but labelled his death "still under investigation" for another 4 months to keep the lying narrative alive that he was "killed by white supremacist Trump supporters", despite that he OBVIOUSLY died of a stroke, as Sicknick's brother disclosed to the press way back on January 8th, immediately after Sicknick's death and autopsy.
Also suspiciously, despite the DC coroner's office keeping the investigation open, on a highly controversial case with national visibility, Sicknick's body
was immediately cremated. Why would you do or permit that, except to conceal the evidence, on such a high profile death, while the case was "Still beign investigated"?
The Capitol police, the DC metro police, and the DC coroner's office, are all clear conspiracists in shaping the lying Democrat Jan 6th "insurrection" narrative, and keeping it alive.
As is the
97% Democrat-donating FBI and DOJ.
For Byrd, who is Black, the incident turned his life upside down. He has been in hiding for months after he received a flood of death threats and racist attacks that started when his name leaked onto right-wing websites.
But in his interview with Holt, Byrd said he has no doubt that he made the right decision in light of the circumstances.
“I know that day I saved countless lives,” Byrd said. “I know members of Congress, as well as my fellow officers and staff, were in jeopardy and in serious danger. And that’s my job.”
"Saved countless lives", my ass. Byrd was under no threat, committed a criminal shooting of an unarmed girl, with no evidence it was in the cause of preventing anything.
It's all just lying Democrat talking points, that just props up their lying Jan 6th "right wing insurrection" narrative.
Good. I'm
glad he's receiving death threats and living in fear. He deserves it for what he did. I would prefer if the Capitol police or FBI would investigate the shooting and handle justice toward him through legal channels and the rule of law. But at least he is not permitted to just laugh at what he got away with.
The way Lois Lerner, John Koskinen( also involved at the IRS), James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, Bill Priestap, Bruce and Nellie Ohr, and so many others are, have gotten away with their clear crimes, without penalty.
Actually PROFITED !
As have all 7 top Obama officials who plotted the framing of Michael Flynn in the Oval Office on Jan 5th 2017.
As have the Clintons and their aides with Hillary's illegal private server, selling State Department access in exchange for hundreds of millions in donations by foreign governments to the Clinton Foundation, Clinton and her aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, who helped erase and shred files, and smash computers and cel phones with incriminating evidence against them. Never charged with obstruction of justice or destroying subpoeanaed evidence, or perjury, or gross negligence in leaking top secret State Department information, nothing.
Contrast that with the midnight raids on the offices and homes of Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, George Papadapoulos, Roger Stone, Michael Cohen and other Trump officials, where midnight raids were aggressively done by FBI on the remotest POSSIBILITY that they MIGHT EVEN TRY to destroy evidence.
As compared with gentle subpoenas issues to Hillary Clinton for her records, with no FBI raids, where Hillary Clinton and her personal mafia were given months to destroy evidence, and ACTUALLY DID destroy tens of thousands of documents and electronic files. With absolutely no FBI penalty or prosecution for it.
Byrd said he had no idea whether the person he shot was carrying a weapon. It was only later that night that he found out that the rioter was a woman who was unarmed.
Asked why he pulled the trigger, Byrd said it was a “last resort.”
“I tried to wait as long as I could,” he told Holt. “I hoped and prayed no one tried to enter through those doors. But their failure to comply required me to take the appropriate action to save the lives of members of Congress and myself and my fellow officers.”
If any other officer fired at a suspect, particularly a BLACK suspect, in any city, anywhere in the U.S., without having seen a gun first, that officer would be fired and on trial for excessive force and manslaughter.
There was no urgency or imminent threat before Byrd opened fire, the video shows he clearly was not in imminent danger, he took his sweet time for several seconds from 25 feet away, carefully aimed, and fired at the UNARMED Ashli Babbitt.
I would lay money this Lt. Michael Byrd is a straight-ticket Democrat voter, who hates Trump supporters. And he is eager to be a spinning part in the Democrat narrative machine. We've already seen that is the case of the other 4 previous "neutral, non-political" officers who were "just doing their job" on Jan 6th, who testified in hearings a few weeks ago. In point of fact, every one of them are PROVEN Democrat zealots. The black officer who testified even protested in BLM rallies, and posted photos of his participation on Facebook.
Don't expect NBC Newspeak to ever report that.
Byrd has been cleared of wrongdoing by the Justice Department and the Capitol Police. In announcing its decision not to charge him, the Justice Department said in April that investigators had examined video, physical evidence from the scene, autopsy results and statements from the officer involved, as well as other officers and witnesses.
“The investigation revealed no evidence to establish that, at the time the officer fired a single shot at Ms. Babbitt, the officer did not reasonably believe that it was necessary to do so in self-defense or in defense of the Members of Congress and others evacuating the House Chamber,” federal prosecutors said in a statement.”
Trump owes this man to and all the other law enforcement officers that day. Instead he gets the usual Trump lies and labeled a murderer.
Byrd hasn't been cleared of anything !!
He was given a free pass, there WAS no investigation, the 97% Democrat-donating FBI, and the (Democrat-aligned Capitol Police leadership, just arbitrarily decided an investigation of the shooting "wasn't necessary". Interesting how neither FBI or Capitol police have released the 15,000 hours of video surveillance footage to the public or the media.
If Ashli Babbit had been Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown or Rayshawn Brooks, or Daunte Williams, or one of thousands of other suspects killed in a police shooting over the last 10 years, and the officer was exonerated WITHOUT EVEN AN INVESTIGATION, cities all over this country would be burning in their name.
This is outrageous abuse of tyrannical weaponized police power, and it will not stand.
