Jack Cashill loves to whitewash the crimes of Capitol rioters and pretend that they are victims because they are being held accountable for their actions. He took a different approach in his Feb. 7 WorldNetDaily column, attacking the law enforcement officer who shot and killed Capitol insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt. He started by trying to suggest that Babbitt wasn’t the extremist she actually was, while also hinting at the right-wing conspiracy theory that the protesters were actually undercover agents provocateur:
A suit filed recently by Judicial Watch on behalf of Ashli Babbitt’s widower, Aaron Babbitt, shows just how perverse is the state of justice in the age of Obama-Biden.
On Jan. 6, 2021, the 5-foot-2 Ashli found herself trapped by a crowd in the narrow corridor leading to the Speaker’s Lobby of the U.S. Capitol.
In that crowd was Zachary Alam, a 30-year-old with a criminal past. He reached between the three Capitol Police officers guarding the doors to the lobby and began smashing the glass, shouting a very un-MAGA like, “F–k the Blue.”
Alam’s glasses flew off on impact. Fleeing the madness, Ashli hopped into the window pane now fully free of glass. Only a person as small as she could have managed that feat.
Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, the incident commander for the House on Jan. 6, promptly shot her, the least justifiable police shooting ever caught on video.
Cashill didn’t mention that Alam has been convicted of several felonies related to the riot, which undermines his suggestion that he was an undercover agent. He also failed to make clear that the alleged version of events he’s reciting is an approved narrative issued by Judicial Watch taken from its lawsuit, and that it has yet to be held to court examination — indeed, PolitiFact called that story “speculative and unsubstantiated,” adding that “Videos of the incident do not clearly capture all that Babbitt was saying and doing, let alone feeling, at the time.” Nevertheless, Cashill quoted further from the unsubstantiated Judicial Watch lawsuit to attack Byrd:
As the Babbitt suit makes clear, Byrd violated just about every USCP directive on the use of deadly force. Masked and out of uniform, Byrd did not identify himself as a police officer, did not give Ashli verbal orders to stop, nor give her a chance to comply.
Byrd did not “diligently assess” the situation before firing. He never considered any other defensive tactics or compliance techniques. He disregarded the presence of seven other police officers in his line of fire.
Most critically, Ashli did not pose “an imminent danger of death or serious injury.” When Byrd fired, he did not even know she was a female.
From there, Cashill complained that “For nearly nine months after the shooting, the media showed no interest in Byrd’s identity,” and that by contrast “the Minneapolis PD made no effort to protect Derek Chauvin and his colleagues,” going on to huff that “The media competed to dox police officers, especially white ones, involved in any controversial police action.” Cashill concluded by smearing Byrd as a liar, dubiously portraying overstatements as “lies”:
As Holt repeated twice, the USCP, the Metropolitan PD and the Justice Department had all cleared Byrd of any wrongdoing. What they could not clear him of, especially after his one-time appearance on NBC, was lying.
Byrd lied about things big and small, even things he didn’t have to lie about. Most grandiose was his claim, “I know that day I saved countless lives.”
In truth, the bullet that killed Ashli Babbitt was the only bullet fired that day in or around the Capitol. Among those Byrd claimed to have saved were members of Congress who were “disabled” or very nearly so.
“Some of those individuals were in the lobby with me,” said Byrd. In fact, there were no members of Congress in the lobby, let alone disabled ones.
To show their indifference to the truth, and their disdain for the MAGA movement, the regime had Byrd promoted to captain two years after the interview.
Meanwhile, speaking of threats, Derek Chauvin struggles to recover from those 22 knife wounds he endured in an Arizona prison.
Cashill is a major Chauvin apologist who spreads conspiracy theories in a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that we all saw the George Floyd video.
A note at the end of his column states that “Jack Cashill is working on a new book, ‘Ashli: The Untold Story of the Women of January 6.'” One has to wonder if Cashill will leave untold in his book the story of Babbitt being a QAnon adherent who made violent threats and spewed conspiracy theories.