‘Maga warrior’ nominated by Trump to lead DHS said shooting of January 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt was justified – as it happened

Markwayne Mullin, the Oklahoma senator who was picked by Donald Trump on Thursday to replace Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary, is known as a fierce defender of the president, but comments he made in the aftermath of the January 6 riot, in which he called the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt justified, could lead to backlash from Trump’s most ardent supporters.

During the 2021 riot, Mullin, who was a congressman at the time, stayed on the House floor and attempted to help Capitol Police officers keep the pro-Trump mob from breaking into the chamber where dozens of lawmakers were still sheltering.

One news photograph from that day showed Mullin close to Lt. Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer shot and killed Babbitt minutes later, as she tried to climb through the barricaded door to the Speakers Lobby to gain access to the House chamber.

Although Babbitt’s family denied that she ignored a verbal warning from the officer to stay back, another rioter at the door, who held up his hands when the offier drew his gun, told a news crew minutes after the shooting that he had heard the warning.

Mullin later told the police investigation into Babbitt’s shooting led by the DC Metropolitan Police, that he had heard Byrd issue a verbal warning to the rioters to stay back before he opened fire.

Byrd was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by investigators, but Babbitt’s family brought a wrongful death case that Trump’s justice department settled for nearly $5 million last year.

During his campaign to return to office, Trump described the killing of Babbitt as “murder”.

Last year, when the president was asked about her family’s wrongful death suit, he seemed to embrace the baseless conspiracy theory that Babbitt was not trying to lead the mob across the barricade into the House, but fighting to keep the rioters out.

“I’m a big fan of Ashli Babbitt, okay, and Ashli Babbitt was a really good person who was a big Maga fan, Trump fan,” Trump told the rightwing cable channel Newsmax. “And she was innocently standing there – they even say, trying to sort of hold back the crowd. And a man did something unthinkable to her when he shot her, and I think it’s a disgrace.”

In an interview with the cable network C-SPAN in July 2021, however, Mullin strongly defended the officer who shot Babbitt.

“He did not want to use lethal force at all. This guy is later in his career,” Mullin said. “He was the last person in the world that ever wanted to use force like that, and he wasn’t one to do that. I know for a fact, because after it happened, he came over and he was physically and emotionally distraught. I actually gave him a hug and said, ‘Sir, you did what you had to do.’”

“Unfortunately, the young lady, her family’s life has changed and it’s an unfortunate situation that she lost her life, but the lieutenant’s life has also changed, too,” Mullin said. “It wasn’t his choice. He did not show up that day to have to do that. He got put in a situation where he had to do his job because there were members still in the balcony. If you present your weapon and give commands and they still approach you and they don’t listen, you have no choice. You have to at that point discharge your weapon in a manner of self-defense or it will be taken away from you and put all our lives in danger.”

“So what he did, he did, but I believe that he saved other people’s lives along the way because I think there would have been a lot more that would have lost their lives,” Mullin added. “The lieutenant had to do what he had to do to protect us.”