Ashli Babbitt’s mother believes her daughter would’ve been treated differently if she were Black

Micki Withoeft is the mother of Ashli Babbitt, the 35-year-old Air Force veteran who joined a mob of thousands of insurrectionists on Jan. 6 to storm the U.S. Capitol. On Sunday, Withoeft spoke on Rudy Giuliani’s podcast about her daughter and the day she was shot by a Capitol Police officer.

In addition to referring to Jan. 6 as a “sham” and the House Select committee as a “farce of a committee,” Withoeft seemed convinced that her daughter was wrongfully murdered and agreed with Giuliani’s co-host Maria Ryan’s assessment that if Babbitt had been Black and the cop had been white, things would have turned out differently.

Lt. Michael Byrd, the 28-year veteran Capitol Police officer who shot Babbitt, is Black. 

Withoeft goes on to allege that the decision to withhold the officer’s name from the public “was a further attempt to insight racial division” and calls him simply a “bad cop” and her daughter an “American patriot.”

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