Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) called on officials to release the name of the officer who fatally shot Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6 and said that thousands of hours of security footage from the U.S. Capitol breach should be released to the public.
He also noted that Babbitt’s family has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking the officer’s name and related information, he told Newsmax on June 9.
“In any normal circumstance where you have an officer-involved shooting, you have people that immediately go out there and say, ‘Where’s the videotape? Where’s the videotape? We need to know what officer did this,'” Nunes said.
Nunes referenced the release of body camera footage after high-profile, officer-involved shootings to question why the same level of scrutiny isn’t being applied to the Babbitt shooting.
“Why are we living under a different set of rules?” he said. “I think that’s what the Babbitt family is probably asking, and I agree with them.”
Approximately 14,000 hours of video footage from inside the Capitol during the breach on Jan. 6 haven’t been released to the public, Nunes claimed.
“Why is that? Why do we not have that? Why do we not have an accounting of the dozens of people that actually broke the windows versus the people who just walked in openly because the Capitol police let them in?” he said during the Newsmax interview.
Last week, Babbitt’s husband, Aaron Babbitt, filed an FOIA lawsuit against the Metropolitan Police Department to obtain information about the identity of the officer who fatally shot her.
Babbitt family attorney Terrell Roberts told The Epoch Times last week the lawsuit is designed to collect records ahead of a suit that has yet to be filed, asserting the officer violated Ashli Babbitt’s constitutional rights.
“It’s commonly done in cases like this, where you can get access to police records and things like that through FOIA actions,” he said. “The complication here is that the Capitol Police are not subject to FOIA. However, they used the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia to conduct their investigation.”
On June 8, Roberts told CNBC that the upcoming financial lawsuit “does not hinge on the current FOIA action against D.C.’s police department.”
The Department of Justice announced in April it closed an investigation into the officer-involved shooting of Babbitt and decided against pursuing charges against the unnamed officer.
Before reaching its conclusion, the DOJ said the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and other officials reviewed video footage posted on social media, witness statements, statements from the officer, and the results of Babbitt’s autopsy.
Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.
