Micki Witthoeft, center, mother of Ashli Babbitt, joins protesters outside of the Supreme Court in Washington on Jan. 6, 2023. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
The Air Force will provide Ashli Babbitt’s family with military funeral honors, reversing a 2021 decision to deny such honors for the veteran who was fatally shot by a police officer during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, officials said.
Matthew Lohmeier, the undersecretary of the Air Force, wrote of the service’s decision in an Aug. 15 letter to Babbitt’s family that was shared Wednesday by Judicial Watch, a conservative activist group.
“I understand that the family’s initial request was denied by Air Force leadership in a letter dated Feb. 9, 2021,” Lohmeier wrote in the letter to Ashli Babbitt’s husband, Aaron Babbitt. “However, after reviewing the circumstances of Ashli’s death, and considering the information that has come forward since then, I am persuaded that the previous determination was incorrect.”
Lohmeier offered in his letter to meet at the Pentagon with the family members.
An Air Force spokesperson confirmed the contents of the letter on Thursday but declined further comment. Air Force Lt. Gen. Brian Kelly, who has since retired, initially denied the family’s request for military funeral honors, writing they “would bring discredit upon the Air Force.”
This driver's license photo of Ashli Babbitt from the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA), provided to AP by the Calvert County Sheriff's Office. (Maryland MVA/Courtesy of the Calvert County Sheriff’s Office)
Babbitt, 35, was an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump who traveled from San Diego to attend the rallies and protests on Jan. 6, 2021, challenging former President Joe Biden’s win over Trump in the 2020 presidential election. She was a veteran of the Air Force and Air National Guard who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan as a security forces airman.
She was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer while attempting to climb through a broken window of a door leading into the House Speaker’s lobby that had been barricaded to protect evacuating Congress members from the mob of Trump’s supporters seeking to stop the lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory. Babbitt was the only person shot and killed during the attack.
The police officer was cleared by the Justice Department later in 2021 of wrongdoing in the shooting after investigators determined he fired a single shot at Babbitt believing “it was necessary to do so in self-defense or in defense of the members of Congress and others evacuating the House chamber,” according to an April 2021 DOJ probe.
But Judicial Watch officials challenged the DOJ’s findings and filed a wrongful death lawsuit for Babbitt’s family this year, charging Babbitt “was ambushed and defenseless” and should have not been shot. The Justice Department in May settled with the Babbitt family, granting them a nearly $5 million settlement in the case. That came after Trump on his first day back in the White House granted pardons to nearly all the individuals charged with crimes for their actions during the Jan. 6 attack.
Military funeral honors are meant to honor those who served with a free honor guard detail of at least two service members, including at least one from the veteran’s service branch, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. At minimum, the ceremony is to include the playing of taps, and the folding and presentation of an American flag to the deceased veteran’s next of kin.
“Ashli Babbitt’s family is grateful to President Trump, [Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth and Undersecretary Lohmeier for reversing the Biden Defense Department’s cruel decision to deny Ashli funeral honors as a distinguished veteran of the Air Force,” Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch’s president, said in a prepared statement. “… Judicial Watch is proud to have done its part in bringing her family a measure of justice and accountability for Ashli’s outrageous killing.”
Rioters storm the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. (Robert Reid/Stars and Stripes)
