The widower of Ashli Babbitt told the U.S. Capitol Police officer who killed his wife during the siege of Congress to “suck it up” and get over death threats he has been subjected to since the shooting.
Pointing to his own experience, Aaron Babbitt discounted Officer Michael Byrd’s stated dismay over people threatening to kill and decapitate him ever since he fatally shot Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran and Trump supporter who stormed inside the U.S. Capitol building during the Jan. 6 riot.
“I don’t even want to hear him talk about how he’s getting death threats and he’s scared,” Aaron Babbitt told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on Thursday evening in response to an interview of Byrd that aired earlier in the day.
“I’ve been getting death threats since Jan. 7 — two, three, five, 10 a day — and all I did on Jan. 6 was become a widower. So, you’re going to have to suck it up, bud, and take it,” Babbitt said.
OFFICER WHO SHOT ASHLI BABBITT SAYS HE WAS ‘PREPARED TO DO THE SAME THING’ TO PROTECT TRUMP
Byrd, who shot and killed an unarmed Ashli Babbitt as she attempted to climb through a glass-paneled door near the Speaker’s Lobby, publicly identified himself and spoke out for the first time in a sit-down interview with NBC News’s Lester Holt, detailing the threats he has received.
“They talked about, you know, killing me, cutting off my head. You know, very vicious and cruel things,” he said, adding that some of the attacks were racist in nature.
“It’s all disheartening because I know I was doing my job,” Byrd said.
Byrd has been strongly criticized by former President Donald Trump and a handful of Republican lawmakers who accused him of murdering Babbitt.
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The Justice Department declined to charge Byrd in connection to the shooting. The Capitol Police separately found Byrd’s actions “were consistent with the officer’s training and USCP policies and procedures” and that he “potentially saved Members and staff from serious injury and possible death” at the hands of the rioters.
Attorney Terry Roberts, who represents Babbitt’s family and is preparing a $10 million wrongful death suit against Capitol Police, called the USCP’s conclusions resultant of a “one-sided inquiry” that was conducted “behind closed doors.”
