Outside the Beltway

In Front of Our Noses: Celebrating an Insurrectionist

Air Force honors for Ashli Babbitt.

Steven L. Taylor · Sunday, September 7, 2025 · 4 comments

This story is a week or so old, and one level one might think that it is kind of relatively minor, yet I think it is actually a very important story that fits very directly into the notion of keeping attention on that which is right in front of our noses.

Via The Hill: Air Force to provide funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt.

Babbitt, an Air Force veteran, was shot and killed by law enforcement during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot as she attempted to climb through a barricaded door to the Speaker’s lobby near the House chamber.

A month after the riot, an Air Force representative under former President Biden’s administration informed her family that military funeral honors were denied for her funeral “due to the circumstances preceding her death.”

“As a result, I have determined that military funeral honors would bring discredit upon the Air Force,” Brian Kelly, an Air Force lieutenant general, wrote in that letter.

And now, under the current administration, that discredit with be brought on the Air Force.

An eligible veteran’s honor guard detail consists of at least two members of the armed forces, one of whom is a representative of the veteran’s service branch, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. It also includes a ceremony including the playing of taps and the folding and presentation of the American flag to the next of kin.

“Ashli Babbitt’s family is grateful to President Trump, Secretary [Pete] Hegseth and Under Secretary Lohmeier for reversing the Biden Defense Department’s cruel decision to deny Ashli funeral honors as a distinguished veteran of the Air Force,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.

In May, the government agreed to pay Babbitt’s family nearly $5 million as part of a settlement.

So, the Trump administration is rewarding, both financially and with military honors, a person who participated in an insurrection against the United States in the hopes of disrupting the constitutional process of electing the President of the United States.

Here are the findings from the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

The investigation determined that, on January 6, 2021, Ms. Babbitt joined a crowd of people that gathered on the U.S. Capitol grounds to protest the results of the 2020 presidential election.  Inside the Capitol building, a Joint Session of Congress, convened to certify the results of the Electoral College vote, was underway.  Members of the crowd outside the building, which was closed to the public during the Joint Session, eventually forced their way into the Capitol building and past U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) officers attempting to maintain order.  The Joint Session was stopped, and the USCP began evacuating members of Congress.

The investigation further determined that Ms. Babbitt was among a mob of people that entered the Capitol building and gained access to a hallway outside “Speaker’s Lobby,” which leads to the Chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives.  At the time, the USCP was evacuating Members from the Chamber, which the mob was trying to enter from multiple doorways.  USCP officers used furniture to barricade a set of glass doors separating the hallway and Speaker’s Lobby to try and stop the mob from entering the Speaker’s Lobby and the Chamber, and three officers positioned themselves between the doors and the mob.  Members of the mob attempted to break through the doors by striking them and breaking the glass with their hands, flagpoles, helmets, and other objects.  Eventually, the three USCP officers positioned outside the doors were forced to evacuate.  As members of the mob continued to strike the glass doors, Ms. Babbitt attempted to climb through one of the doors where glass was broken out.  An officer inside the Speaker’s Lobby fired one round from his service pistol, striking Ms. Babbitt in the left shoulder, causing her to fall back from the doorway and onto the floor.  A USCP emergency response team, which had begun making its way into the hallway to try and subdue the mob, administered aid to Ms. Babbitt, who was transported to Washington Hospital Center, where she succumbed to her injuries.

It is, of course, deeply bizarre that for all the “law and order” rhetoric of this administration that they would honor someone clearly involved in a criminal act.

But, of course, only bizarre to people who actually respect constitutional practices and the actual rule of law.

Rather, the signal, along with pardons and commutations, was that violence in the name of Trump will not only be tolerated, it will be forgiven and rewarded.

Never forget the two hours of silence from Trump while he watched the crowd he had helped stir up do violence in the US Capitol.

Never forget that this is what he said after hours of mayhem:

I know your pain, I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt.

It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil.

I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace.

Never forget he called it a “day of love” during the 2024 campaign.

There is no doubt in my mind that Trump got what he wanted when the crowd stormed the Capitol, and I think he did want them to scare the Congress into throwing out slates of electors that he didn’t like in hopes that the fake slates would be counted.

And yet, the Republican Party lacked the moral fortitude to do the right thing in the Senate and convict him and bar him from future office. In their vain, shallow, power-hungry self-interest, they thought they could ride the dragon. Then, enough voters didn’t care because they were pretty sure the economy was better before the pandemic, and since Trump was president then, somehow he would magically bring it all back.

But if there is even a modicum of doubt in anyone’s mind about the heart and mind of Donald J. Trump and his view of J6, just believe him. words and his actions, and stop pretending like there is any ambiguity whatsoever.

Of course, I know that a lot of people cling to that ambiguity because to give way to the clear facts means admitting that they voted for someone who tried to steal an election via violence.

I continue to think that one of the deepest flaws of American politics is its inability to hold people to account. That was true after the Civil War, it was true for Nixon, and it was true with J6 (to name but three prominent examples, but to provide by no means an exhaustive list).

To conclude: yes, the honors given to Babbitt are in many ways minor and far down the list of what is in the news. But it is a clear illustration of what this president values, which includes fierce loyalty to him, including perpetrating violence in his name.

This seems rather directly relevant to threats to declare “war” on US cities, not to mention the arming and massive funding of a masked paramilitary organization willing to whisk people off the streets, including US citizens, and sort out their legal status later.

From the NYT on January 7, 2021 (Woman Killed in Capitol Embraced Trump and QAnon):

Her name will now be connected to that date, and to shaky footage showing a crowd of rioters smashing glass on the door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby of the Capitol.

At the front of that crowd is the small figure of Ms. Babbitt, wearing snow boots, jeans, and a Trump flag wrapped around her neck like a cape.

“Go! Go!” she shouts, and then two men hoist her up to the rim of a broken window. As she sticks her head through the frame, a Capitol Police officer in plain clothes fires a shot, and she falls back into the crowd. Blood starts pouring from her mouth.