DOJ Reportedly Will Pay Ashli Babbitt’s Estate $5 Million; Claims to Have Charged LaMonica McIver
One thing even good reporting on Stephen Miller’s attempt to deport hundreds of Venezuelans under Miller’s nested false claims that they are members of Tren de Aragua and that Tren de Aragua is a terrorist group directed by the Venezuelan government to invade the United States misses is that Miller is doing it to aid in false equivalences.
Both Miller and Trump propagandist Mike Davis illustrated this the other day.
Davis falsely claimed that the Supreme Court, in ruling against Trump’s attempt to render detainees over Easter weekend, provided habeas in just 24 hours. But, Davis claimed, it took the same court 30,000 hours to “provide relief” to Jan6ers “persecuted by Biden,” by which he meant those who were prosecuted under 18 USC 1512(c)(2).
Ultimately SCOTUS narrowed the application of the law to those who corruptly tampered with evidence involved in a proceeding. Almost everyone charged with obstruction premeditated their effort to disrupt the vote certification, to deny Joe Biden his victory and his supporters their right to have their vote counted.
Miller called these people who attacked democracy, “innocent Americans.” He, like Davis, called the Venezuelans “terrorists.”
CATO’s David Bier released a report yesterday showing that 50 of the men already sent to to Nayib Bukele’s concentration camp were not only not proven to be terrorists, but had been admitted into the United States legally. Most were detained because of their tattoos.
These legal immigrants include a temporary visa holder and four men who were authorized to travel through the US refugee program. The government vetted these refugees abroad and concluded that they would face persecution, letting them resettle in the United States. The other 45 legal immigrants scheduled appointments using the CBP One app, through which they were permitted to seek entry. Among those with appointments, 24 were paroled into the United States, where they could live and work legally for up to two years, while the other 21 were detained at the port of entry.
[snip]
These people came to the United States with advanced US government permission, were vetted and screened before arrival, violated no US immigration law, and the US government turned around and “disappeared” them without due process to a foreign prison. It is paying the Salvadoran government to continue to keep them incarcerated.
[snip]
Most, at least 42, were labeled as gang members primarily based on their tattoos, which Venezuelan gangs do not use to identify members and are not reliable indicators of gang membership. According to court documents, DHS created a checklist to determine that heavily weights “dressing” like a gang member, using “gang signs,” and, most critically, tattoos. No criminal conviction, arrest, or even witness testimony is required.
DHS’s images of “TdA tattoos” include the Jordan logo, an AK-47, a train, a crown, “hijos,” “HJ,” a star, a clock, and a gas mask. But as the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin Melnick has shown, all of these supposed TdA tattoos were not taken from Venezuelan gang members but rather stolen by DHS from social media accounts that have nothing to do with TdA or Venezuela. For instance, DHS obtained its TdA “Jordan” from a Michael Jordan fan account in the United States. It pulled its AK-47 tattoo from a Turkish tattoo artist.
Because these men were denied due process, the public had no opportunity to obtain a real accounting of any evidence against them.
By comparison, those charged with obstructing the vote count for January 6 were arrested on criminal complaints sworn out to a judge, given initial hearings, and convicted via a trial or confession. They got due process.
Stephen Miller called them innocent, even those who admitted to willfully attempting to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s win.
Monday, SCOTUS lifted the stay on a Temporary Postponement of Kristi Noem’s efforts to deport Venezuelans from whom Trump withdrew Temporary Protected Status. Those with individual challenges can continue their challenges but Trump can move forward with deportations.
As part of the same effort to decriminalize January 6, DOJ has agreed to pay Ashli Babbitt’s estate almost $5 million to settle a wrongful death claim related to Babbitt’s invasion of the Speaker’s Lobby where Congress was trying to escape an armed mob.
The Trump administration has agreed to pay just under $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit that Ashli Babbitt’s family filed over her shooting by an officer during the U.S. Capitol riot, according to a person with knowledge of the settlement. The person insisted on anonymity to discuss with The Associated Press terms of a settlement that have not been made public.
The settlement would resolve the $30 million federal lawsuit that Babbitt’s estate filed last year in Washington, D.C. On Jan. 6, 2021, a Capitol police officer shot Babbitt as she tried to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby.
The officer who shot her was cleared of wrongdoing by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which concluded that he acted in self-defense and in the defense of members of Congress. The Capitol Police also cleared the officer.
This is Trump’s goal, Stephen Miller’s goal; it is how Miller got Trump elected. Trump has always claimed investigations into himself and his mob were unjust, but his own investigations into Joe Biden’s kid and before that Hillary Clinton was a hunt for corruption.
Trump’s power rests on claiming up is down, attacks on the US are noble and the defense of rule of law is a crime, accountability for anyone on his team is unjust.
Finally, today, Alina Habba announced on Xitter (nothing appears to be filed yet) that she is dismissing the petty trespassing case against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka “for the sake of moving forward” — or, more likely, because video evidence shows that when he was asked to leave Delaney Hall, he did so, and only after that was he arrested. But in the same statement, Habba announced she was has charged Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, who was shoved while she was objecting to the arrest of Newark’s mayor, which right wingers describe as an attempt to body slam the cops arresting Baraka. McIver is being charged with the same assault charge used against hundreds of Jan6ers who have since been pardoned for their crimes.
Habba claims she,
persistently made efforts to address these issues without bringing criminal charges and [has] given Representative McIver every opportunity to come to a resolution, but she has unfortunately declined.
Uh huh. McIver probably declined to do what CBS is about to, to falsely admit guilt when there is none. In a statement, McIver called the charges political.
McIver, D-10th Dist., called the charges filed by Habba, an appointee and former lawyer for President Donald Trump “purely political.”
“Earlier this month, I joined my colleagues to inspect the treatment of ICE detainees at Delaney Hall in my district,” McIver said in a statement. “We were fulfilling our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many times before, and our visit should have been peaceful and short.
“Instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor Baraka. The charges against me are purely political—they mischaracterize and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight.”
The charge comes amid a WaPo report that Pam Bondi is (was?) considering eliminating the requirement that investigations into Members of Congress and other public officlas involve DOJ’s Public Integrity Division. The Division would have, in this case, warned DOJ officials that in past cases (most notably with people like Scott Perry and Jim Jordan) DOJ determined charges for such actions might violate separation of powers.
Trump not only doesn’t care about things like that, infringing on Congress’ powers is the point.
As I said to Nicole Sandler Friday, Trump was always going to find a way to charge a Member of Congress, just like he found a way to charge a judge. Habba has done so here where McIver has a clear immunity claim, and has done so as someone who clearly has conflicts. Habba’s statement lacks DOJ’s boilerplate comment asserting that charges are just allegations. And the siren in her tweet will add to any claim McIver makes that this violates due process.
Sure, Habba claims she tried to avoid this. But the entire scene at Delaney Hall was designed to elicit such confrontation, to create nesting legal attacks out of which Stephen Miller can spin his lies.
These developments are all of a piece. They are all an effort — one Trump has been pursuing for a decade — to replace rule of law with rule of mob.
Convict-1 / Krasnov is OK with the ‘rule of mob’ (nicely done) but only as long as it’s ‘his’ mob doing the ruling. Peaceful BLM protestors or so-called ANTIFA don’t count, and his minions had one shot in PDX without trial to prove the point.
For those followers of weedy history, one of the more notorious mobs was in Alexandria, Egypt in Ptolemaic times, used as a weapon as well as being frequently out of control with a tendency to turn on a dime. They managed to kill a Pharaoh and remained a menace until summarily broken by Julius Caesar (yes, that one). There is a lesson there.
The freeing of the January 6th convicts and the glorification of Ashli Babbitt, chaps me worse than almost any of Trump’s other atrocities and that is saying something! Her family should be suing Rupert Murdoch’s media outlets, Breitbart, Daily Caller and other right-wing propagandists for their inflammatory rhetoric leading up to January 6th, that radicalized susceptible people like Babbitt and caused her to think she was justified in trying to violently enter the halls of the Congress of the United States!
Paying off the estate of the terrorist Ashli Babbitt, who lost her life while commiting a terrorist act against her country is disgusting. I am flabbergasted and outraged that the Trump administration could even consider it.
I can’t conceive of a way her estate could have won a case against the government. The video evidence is overwhelming. Her death was earned by her actions. It also may have saved other lives as it slowed the violent mob that was about to begin entering the chambers where lawmakers were fleeing for their lives. Or hunkering down for battle.
So, maybe that last part was her “hero” act. What ever happened to responsibility for your own actions for the right wing?
DOJ: Some Jan. 6 defendants should be repaid money they sent to Congress
Prosecutors say those whose convictions were wiped out are entitled to reimbursement of the restitution they paid.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/08/doj-jan-6-congress-00280031
https://bsky.app/profile/capitolhunters.bsky.social/post/3lpk5q2cjls2w
May 19, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Seems this would violate section 4 of the 14th amendment. But I guess violating the constitution whenever he can is one of his goals.
You’re being too generous.
Whatever can be violated, he will.
Is his only goal.
Meanwhile, Zachary Alam, who vandalized and assaulted a path for Babbitt
into the Speaker’s Gallery, was sentenced to 8 years for it and then pardoned,
has been arrested for … wait for it … breaking and entering. From behind WaPo’s paywall:
“A Virginia man who assaulted police at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and smashed the glass pane through which Ashli Babbitt climbed before she was fatally shot, has been arrested again outside of Richmond. Zachary J. Alam is accused of breaking into a home this month while the residents were there. He appears to be the first Capitol rioter arrested on new charges after President Donald Trump granted clemency to the roughly 1,600 people charged for their roles in the insurrection. …”
Sounds like a bad hombre.
Practice almost makes perfect.
See Matthew Huttle. He was about to be arrested but took the coward’s way out.
Whole thread here from Lindsay Beyerstein on J6ers re life after pardons:
https://bsky.app/profile/beyerstein.bsky.social/post/3lpitkzqtws2l
Micki has been making bank off her daughter’s corpse for years now. Surprised she didn’t have her stuffed and on display at freedom corner. She hit the jackpot now.
I am awaiting the news that Mike Johnson will rename the doorway to the House chamber “The Ashli Babbitt Defender of Democracy Entrance,” complete with a nice brass plaque.
And I wish I was joking.
Brass plaque?
Gold doors with the Smithsonian’s Hope Diamond as the door handle.
From BNN:
Home Depot “says more customers are delaying larger projects due to persistently high interest rates.”
Furthermore, anybody believe this part of the story, “The retailer plans to hold prices steady and will reduce non-U.S. imports to 10 per cent by next year.”
Steve Bannon pushes for habeas corpus showdown at the Supreme Court by the end of June Bannon: “We are going to suspend the writ of habeas corpus if the courts keep ruling against us and don’t allow these mass deportations to continue” https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-pushes-habeas-corpus-showdown-supreme-court-end-june John Knefel 05/16/25
“I don’t think a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”
On the other hand, Steve Bannon can wear all the shirts and pens he wants. Because this is a free country. You can’t let the communists win.
Given the threat of federal charges against Congresswoman McIver, here’s Timothy Snyder’s latest post in which he takes a close look at Eagle Ed Martin, weaponization czar.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-weaponization-czar