By Spencer S. Hu — U.S. to pay nearly $5 million to family of Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt
President Donald Trump’s administration is set to pay nearly $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt to settle a lawsuit brought by the estate of the Trump supporter who was fatally shot by police when she tried to storm the House Speaker’s Lobby during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Babbitt’s family filed the wrongful death lawsuit in early 2024, seeking $30 million. Lawyers for both sides told a judge this month that they had reached a settlement in principle, reversing the Justice Department’s earlier opposition in the case, which had been set for trial in July 2026.
No final deal had been signed and terms were not disclosed at the May 2 hearing. Judge Ana C. Reyes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia directed both sides to update the court this Thursday.
Two people briefed on the matter said the Justice Department has agreed in principle to pay just under $5 million to Babbitt’s family, with about one-third to go to their attorneys, who include the conservative group Judicial Watch and Alexandria, Virginia, lawyer Richard Driscoll. The two people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a pending court matter.
Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, declined to confirm the total settlement amount, but said his group was working pro bono and “is not getting any money from the settlement,” and that Driscoll would be paid for his services from Judicial Watch and the Babbitt family, not from the settlement. Reyes set a separate deadline for Monday for the parties to address whether they agreed to set aside payment for the family’s prior attorney.
Spokesmen for the U.S. attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., and the Justice Department’s civil division did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
The settlement comes after Trump returned to office casting Babbitt as a martyr and seeking to rewrite the history of the assault on the Capitol as a heroic act of collective patriotism, not a violent effort to overturn an election. Five people died in or immediately after the violence, during which more than 140 officers were assaulted.
In 2023, then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) angered Trump, saying of the person who shot Babbitt, “I think the police officer did his job.” But McCarthy was replaced that fall by Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), who led a congressional effort to overturn in court the 2020 presidential results in four battleground states and who voted against certifying the electoral college vote in two states.
But this month in the Senate, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) helped sink the nomination of Ed Martin, a pro-Trump 2020 “Stop the Steal” planner, to become U.S. attorney for D.C. “We have to be very, very clear that what happened on January the 6th was wrong,” Tillis said. “It was not prompted or created by other people to put those people in trouble.”
Babbitt, a 35-year-old California native and Air Force veteran, was fatally wounded in the neck at 2:44 p.m. while trying to climb through a smashed glass panel of the barricaded Speaker’s Lobby doors deep inside the Capitol, where rioters had reached a final security perimeter outside the House chamber.
The Justice Department found that there was insufficient evidence to prove Babbitt’s civil rights had been violated, and that it was reasonable for the officer to have believed he was firing in self-defense or in defense of fleeing lawmakers, who were forced to evacuate from a session to certify Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
A Capitol Police investigation cleared the officer involved, saying his actions at the height of the riot “potentially saved members and staff from serious injury and possible death from a large crowd of rioters who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol and to the House Chamber where members and staff were steps away.”
Babbitt, who had a Trump flag draped around her neck, was the only Capitol rioter killed by police. In a statement in 2021, Trump said he had questioned why the officer who shot her was “getting away with murder.”
The family’s lawsuit alleged that U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd was negligent in killing Babbitt, who was unarmed. It also claimed Babbitt had her hands in the air when she was shot.
“Ashli posed no threat to the safety of anyone,” the lawsuit stated, and did not go to Washington “as part of a group or for any unlawful or nefarious purpose.”
The officer said he couldn’t fully see her hands or what she was carrying in a backpack, and knew of police radio reports that pipe bombs had been found on Capitol Hill, officers were down and rioters were using weapons against them.
Byrd lawyer Mark E. Schamel said Monday, “Consistent with the most recent ruling by the Supreme Court on the use of force by officers, Lieutenant Byrd did exactly what he was supposed to have done that day to protect the elected officials he was swon to protect.”
U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger sent a message to his department’s officers earlier this month after hearing of the proposed settlement. “This is extremely disappointing and I completely disagree with the Department of Justice’s decision,” Manger wrote.
“In 2021, the DOJ said that there was no evidence to show that law enforcement broke the law. After a thorough investigation it was determined to be a justified shooting. This settlement sends a chilling message to law enforcement officers across our nation – especially those who have a protective mission like ours,” Manger wrote.
On March 25, Trump said in an interview with the conservative Newsmax cable outlet that he was considering whether to establish a compensation fund for pardoned rioters. Trump pardoned nearly all of about 1,600 people charged in the riot, including at least 379 charged with assaulting police or media members. And he granted clemency to 14 members of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups, most of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
His administration has moved to fire prosecutors and identify FBI agents involved in the investigation, open investigations into their handling of cases, and erase evidence and public statements about one of the largest criminal investigations in U.S. history from Justice Department websites.
