A settlement has been reached in the $30 million civil suit filed by Ashli Babbitt’s estate. The amount is unknown but you can bet it will be at least a million.
You may recall that on January 6, 2021, insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt died after she tried to enter the Capitol through a broken window in the middle of the violence.
From CBS News:
In a 2024 court filing, the [Department of Justice] argued, “Ms. Babbitt unlawfully entered the Capitol. She made her way to the east doors of the Speaker’s Lobby situated immediately behind the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives, the site of Joint Sessions of Congress. Although officers had barricaded the Speaker’s Lobby doors with heavy furniture, demonstrators broke through the glass panels of the lobby doors and matching windows (called “sidelights”) on either side of the doors.”
The police officer who shot Babbitt was “exonerated after a thorough investigation,” Mary Trump noted in 2021 after her cousin, Donald, released a video falsely claiming Babbitt was shot “for no reason.”
In fact, the officer “may well have saved dozens of lives—including his own and the lives of fellow officers, the lives of Vice President Mike Pence, members of Congress of both parties, and anybody else who happened to be working in the Capitol that day,” Mary Trump added.
Nevertheless, Felon 47 turned Babbitt into a MAGA heroine in his effort to rewrite history. The right-wing Judicial Watch filed the $30 million lawsuit on the Babbitt estate’s behalf.
More from CBS News:
Babbitt’s mother, Micki Wittehoff helped lead a nightly protest outside the Washington, D.C., jail for more than two years, in defense of U.S. Capitol riot defendants and convicted felons. Wittehoff’s advocacy helped secure meetings with then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, references to Babbitt by President Trump and a selfie photo with Kash Patel, who later was confirmed as the director of the FBI.
Hours after he was inaugurated, the president issued a blanket pardon for more than 1,500 Capitol riot defendants. The Justice Department has fired prosecutors who handled the Jan. 6 cases.
On Friday afternoon, CBS News reported that a settlement had been reached “in principle” but that no agreement had yet been signed.
The case is in the Washington, D.C. federal court. No doubt the awful Ed Martin, Trump’s acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, is in charge. I recently summed him up as an unqualified former J6 defense lawyer with a jaw-dropping lack of ethics and professionalism who also quacks like a Russian asset. Sen. Adam Schiff has put a hold on Martin’s nomination to keep his job permanently.
Martin has also called for reparations for insurrectionists who were fined for the approximately $3 million in damages they made to the Capitol on Jan. 6. He claimed, in January 2024, they deserve “a big pot of money.”
So, this could well be the first of many pots the rest of us will pay for in order to soothe the fragile ego of the 2020 loser now back in the White House.