Judicial Watch: Air Force Records Reveal Tens of Thousands of Taxpayer Dollars Spent to House Ashli Babbitt Shooter and His Pet for Several Months in ‘Distinguished Visitor Suite’ at Joint Base Andrews(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch announced today it received 31 pages of documents from the Department of the Air Force, Joint Base Andrews, MD, that show U.S. Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd was housed at taxpayer expense at Joint Base Andrews after he shot and killed U.S. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The records were obtained in response to a September 2022 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after Joint Base Andrews, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, and the FBI failed to respond to three July 2022 FOIA requests about Byrd’s housing at Joint Base Andrews while his name as the shooter of Ashli Babbitt was being withheld from the public by the government (Judicial Watch v U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:22-cv-02948)).
In its complaint, Judicial Watch explained to the court that it had asked all three government agencies for all records relating to the billeting of Byrd at Joint Base Andrews during the period from January 6, 2021, to July 2022, including authorization papers, housing, meals, transportation, and visitor logs.
The documents show that Lieutenant Byrd and a pet stayed in a “Distinguished Visitor Suite” at the “Presidential Inn” (part of Air Force Inns) under a “Capitol Police Presidential Inn Reservation” for the period July 8, 2021, through January 28, 2022.
Judicial Watch was informed by a representative at Joint Base Andrews that a “Distinguished Visitor Suite” is typically reserved for officers at the rank of O-7 (Brigadier General or higher.).
An August 2021 email from the assistant hotel manager indicates that the U.S. Capitol Police had been paying Byrd’s bills by phone “every 10 days.”
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https://www.judicialwatch.org/taxpayer-dollars-spent-to-house-ashli-babbitt-shooter/
