Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was shot and killed on Wednesday in the riot in US Capitol corridors, apparently by the Capitol Police, was a fervent supporter of President Donald Trump and also a follower and promoter of many well-known radical conservative activists as leaders of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, according to their social media profiles.
Babbitt, 35, had come to Washington to protest Trump’s defeat in the elections, his brother-in-law Justin Jackson told KNSD-TV, a San Diego station owned by NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News.
Babbitt was an Air Force veteran who was decorated as a controller of the security forces and served on several trips to the Middle East from 2004 to 2016, according to Air Force records.
She also owned a pool service and supplies business with her husband, according to her now deleted Facebook page.
“Ashli was loyal and also extremely passionate about what he believed in,” said Jackson. “She loved this country and was honored to have served in our Armed Forces. Please keep her family in mind and respect your privacy during this time. “
Washington Police Chief Robert Contee confirmed on Wednesday night that Capitol Police shot and killed a person who entered the building, but he did not reveal the person’s name.
While some of his family members expressed confusion about why Babbitt invaded the Capitol, his social media posts offered some insight into possible motivations.
Using the CommonAshSense identifier, Babbitt’s Twitter account was almost uniquely focused on radical conservative topics and conspiracy theories. Among other marginal beliefs, she tweeted about pizzagate, a viral misinformation campaign that falsely claimed that a child abuse ring was being operated by Democrats at a pizzeria in Washington.
Babbitt was a loyal observer of Fox News, according to thousands of tweets for Fox News presenters, but she also got involved in social media with the Internet conspiracy news site InfoWars. In 2020, Babbitt started tweeting with QAnon accounts and using QAnon hashtags. QAnon conspiracy theorists agree with the false belief that high-profile Democrats and Hollywood celebrities are ritually sacrificing children and that Trump is struggling to prevent it. Followers of QAnon allegedly committed violent crimes in the real world, including murder, and the FBI labeled this as a potential threat of domestic terrorism in 2019.
Prominent figures in the QAnon conspiracy theory movement, including L. Lin Wood, the pro-Trump lawyer behind several lawsuits to overturn the election results, are also behind many of the wildest allegations, parroted by the president, of that the election was somehow stolen.
Babbitt’s final tweets included a retweet de Wood, on a call that “Mike Pence @ vp @Mike_Pence must resign and subsequently be charged with TREASON” and “Court President John Roberts must RESIGN Wood was suspended from Twitter on Wednesday.
The day before the rally, she tweeted: “Nothing is going to stop us …. they can try and try and try, but the storm is here and is falling on DC in less than 24 hours …. from darkness to light! “
The Storm is a reference to a QAnon fantasy in which Trump is supposed to punish Democrats and the Hollywood elite for their alleged crimes.
On forums and platforms like Parler, where followers fled after being banned on Twitter and Facebook, QAnon’s followers claimed that Babbitt’s death was falsified and was designed as a “false flag” by the so-called Deep State.
