After the protest rally in Washington two years ago, I spent a lot of time looking at video footage taken by a couple of the participants. Both were close to the doors to the senate chamber and filmed the shooting of Ashli Babbitt by a concealed security official. As the media reporting predictably focused on the supposed threat to members of congress, and the shenanigans of some Q-Anon supporters, what actually happened inside the Capitol building failed to get much attention, even from the protestors - who were mostly unaware of the premeditated murder of their unarmed and innocent colleague. Glenn Greenwald has recently commented on these 'enduring lies'. And despite years of enquiry and endless repetition and embellishment of claims about the "insurrection" - one in which five people died but only one was intentionally killed - the shocking truth revealed by those two independent videographers failed to attract any attention. I wrote two articles about the murder of Ashley Babbitt, published in the American Herald Tribune - "Our All-American Martyr" and "The Last Shot at President Trump". After AHT was closed down by the FBI - for supposed Iranian affiliations - those articles are now only to be found in the web archive, and without the all-important photo analysis. So this is a second attempt to expose what actually happened on January 6th in the Capitol building, and give Ashli Babbitt the posthumous recognition she deserves as a victim of conspiracy.
As I write this, members of congress are being addressed on the steps of the Capitol, with family members of the five who died "defending the Capitol". Extraordinary hubris and pomposity is on display, in portraying the events of January 6th as exceptional and momentous; one need only compare it with the protest rallies that America supports in countries selected for regime change, or ignores in countries where US-friendly regimes have been successfully installed. As I pointed out in my second article above, within a week of the Democrats taking power they were making a huge fuss over police treatment of protest rallies in Russia following Navalny's cleverly timed return to Moscow. But this celebration of the triumph of American exceptionalism over global reality is far worse than it appears. Congress and the Democrats have worked themselves into a terrible lather over the January 6th "insurrection" - much as they did with the Mueller Report - and are making a habit of it; the recent adoration of the Zelensky going beyond all reasonable bounds. They have left no room for stepping a little sideways, leave alone backtracking, in the face of any "new evidence" that might make nonsense of their claim to be the "world's greatest democracy". As I wrote in "the All American Martyr", the huge rally - of several hundred thousand people - that preceded the march to and invasion of the Capitol was peaceful but determined. Trump's supporters of all shades had come to Washington from all over the country to try to stop the declaration of the election results, which they saw as unrepresentative and fraudulent in some cases - and with significant evidence for this. Donald Trump had secured several million more votes than in the 2016 election, and had strong support from his heartland, but had lost the vote in a few key states.
While Trump has been endlessly criticised, either for firing up the protestors or for failing to calm them down, protest rallies have a mind of their own, and these people were not about to go home after his address to the crowd. They were neither violent nor armed, other than with flags and smartphones, but reacted to police and media presence particularly. Neither were they coordinated or planned, but took the opportunity to enter the Capitol building when it arose – apparently by chance and without resistance. Both of the reporters cited above – “Info-wars” and “Jayden X” – recorded their passage through the various rooms and chambers of the building, and the orderly and rather reverent behaviour of the protestors, in awe at seeing inside their seat of power. In fact as fervent nationalists and believers in their rights under the constitution, they saw themselves as there to defend their Capitol from those who had conspired to steal it from them; “Stop the Steal” was one of their chants.
For this group of protestors – the ones at the front who first reached the blocked doors to the senate chamber – their first confrontation with Capitol police was after passing through the statue room. Down the corridor were the doors to the senate chamber, and less than a dozen police and officials in the way. Several minutes of discussion ensued between self-appointed protest leaders and police, as more protestors arrived from behind, but then something odd happened – the guy pictured below appeared from behind the police line and started agitating and shouting incoherently, which soon led to a melee and breakthrough by the crowd.
This short video clip from John Sullivan – aka Jayden X – shows the hostile reaction “Pirelli man” got from both police and protest spokesmen:
This agitator and apparent “agent provocateur” was not seen again amongst the rally crowd until the two videographers arrived at the glass doors to the upper senate chamber, when he appeared again playing the clown and agitator to the crowd. Moments before others including Ashli Babbitt had been arguing with the plain-clothes police.
In the lower frame, Ashli B can be seen looking on in the background, while the agitator turns violent activist and starts smashing the glass doors with a helmet. Note also the Capitol official in a suit and black mask standing beside Babbitt, who was also overseeing police at the previous standoff. As I explained in detail in the second article - and speculated on the observed behaviour of armed and unarmed police - what took place here has all the appearance of being planned, notwithstanding the need to improvise on the spot. The crowd was lured to the entrance to the upper gallery, guarded only by three unarmed plain-clothes police, and with no armed security visible through the windows. The movements and behaviour of the different actors in the minutes before Ashley is shot are charted in these stills from the two videos, time-stamped accordingly:
But the video recordings from which these stills were taken make it clear. The first clip is from Info Wars – ‘The Resistance’ – showing the agitator, and odd movements of police and armed squad, and reaction of the agitator to the shooting, who is seen later retreating down the stairs whence the armed police came earlier. It seems likely he had arrived this way also, perhaps with Ashli B in tow:
John Sullivan’s video of the same period is shot from a different angle, and also records his conversation with one of the guards. Crucially however, after the police have been told to withdraw and the glass is being smashed, Sullivan notices a gun protruding from a doorway, ready to shoot at protestors when they break through. He can be heard shouting “there’s a gun” repeatedly to warn them, but to no avail, and moments later the hidden assassin moves out and fires, and Ashli falls back to the ground:
That clip ends there, but Sullivan goes on filming, recording Ashli Babbitt’s last breaths, along with the reaction of those around her. It is a shocking piece of video, which would be blurred out were it to be shown on public media, so comes with this warning. It may help to realise that Ashli likely lost consciousness the moment she was hit – apparently in the neck. It is also important to observe the behaviour of the Capitol security man and riot squad members, signalling to others as well as suddenly shouting and swearing at the crowd to retreat.
InfoWars also recorded footage of this, and led the way in clearing a passageway for the now dead Ashli Babbitt to be carried out. If the 'intent' of her murder was to end the protest rally it was very successful, and economical; one bullet to turn round a hundred thousand protestors. But when you look at what happened to the world after Biden 'stole the nation', the significance of that lethal shot is incalculable. And there are at least a hundred million Americans now looking for the nation that was once theirs too.
DM January 8th 2023