Triumph of the Insurrectionists

By David A. Graham

Wednesday, September 03, 2025

 

Because the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt on January 6, 2021, was caught on camera, what happened isn’t really in doubt.

 

Babbitt, an Air Force veteran, was part of a crowd that stormed the U.S. Capitol that day, fighting with and attacking police, breaking windows, and then rushing into the building. She eventually ended up outside of the Speaker’s Lobby, an area just beside the House chamber. The doors were barricaded, but another member of the mob broke their glass. Police officers on the other side shouted at people not to enter, but Babbitt tried to climb through the window. When she refused to stop, a Capitol Police officer shot her in the shoulder. She died shortly thereafter.

 

Babbitt’s death was tragic, and not simply in the sense that any needless death is. She died fighting for a lie that she apparently believed: Donald Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump is not always one to return a favor, but he seems determined to repay Babbitt’s devotion by making her an icon—part of a bigger project to turn January 6 into a moment of triumph.

 

Last week, the Air Force confirmed that it would grant military-funeral honors for Babbitt, which typically involve uniformed service members being present to play “Taps,” fold an American flag, and present it to the family. The honors had been denied by the Biden administration.

 

“After reviewing the circumstances of Ashli’s death, and considering the information that has come forward since then, I am persuaded that the previous determination was incorrect,” Matthew Lohmeier, the undersecretary of the Air Force, wrote in a letter. He also invited Babbitt’s family to visit him at the Pentagon. Lohmeier has not explained what the new information is.

 

Even Trump’s allies understood that Babbitt was no hero. Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a MAGA loyalist who was present when she was shot, said that the officer who shot Babbitt “didn’t have a choice at that time,” adding that “his actions, I believe, saved people’s lives even more.” Nevertheless, the Trump administration settled a wrongful-death lawsuit with Babbitt’s family earlier this year, for a reported $5 million. The settlement looks like a political choice, not a legal one; until Trump took office, the Justice Department had been planning to fight the lawsuit. The president also infamously granted sweeping clemency for the rioters on his first day back in the White House, pardoning many and commuting others’ sentences. The beneficiaries include many violent offenders who Vice President J. D. Vance had said just days earlier should not receive clemency.

 

Trump then set about purging prosecutors who had worked on the cases, including line attorneys simply doing their job. Filling their place in the DOJ are people such as Ed Martin, who was an attorney for some of the rioters and now leads the aptly named Weaponization Working Group, and Jared Wise, who NPR reported last month was caught on tape during the insurrection encouraging the mob to “kill” police officers.

As if that were not enough, the right-wing lawyer Mark McCloskey, best known for illegally brandishing a gun at protesters outside his St. Louis home, said last week that he is in discussions with the DOJ about a compensation plan for the rioters, hoping to win them financial damages for supposedly wrongful prosecution. McCloskey even compared the proposed fund—I am not making this up—to the one set up to compensate victims of the September 11 attacks. (The DOJ has not commented on his remarks.)

 

The only real connection between the events is that both were violent attacks on the United States. The difference should be obvious: The 9/11 fund compensates victims and their families, whereas any would-be January 6 fund is being dreamt up to compensate the perpetrators. The overall goal of the rioters was to prevent Congress from certifying the rightful election of Joe Biden. They wanted to prevent a constitutional process. Some carried weapons. Some beat police officers. Some called for the lynching of then–Vice President Mike Pence.

 

In October 2021, I argued that January 6 was becoming a “New Lost Cause,” similar to the way southerners romanticized and justified the Confederacy’s defeat in the Civil War. One rioter even marched through the Capitol with the flag of the Army of Northern Virginia. Four years later, it’s not even clear that the cause lost. Trump not only won back the White House, but, with his actions, he has also managed to turn the insurrection into a delayed triumph. The perpetrators are the victims; the victims, meanwhile, are ostracized.

 

The Trump administration isn’t really rewriting history, the way his administration is attempting to do at the Smithsonian. No one seriously contests what happened on January 6, and hardly anyone still bothers to make the case for fraud in the election. It’s simply justification by force, insisting that the bad guys were actually good. Not coincidentally, the administration is at the same time uplifting the original Lost Cause, placing a portrait of the traitor Robert E. Lee on display at West Point (in apparent defiance of a law that led to its removal) and planning to restore a monument to Confederate veterans at Arlington National Cemetery.

 

These developments in the January 6 cases come at an eerie time. Two years after Trump’s attempted election theft, his Brazilian ally Jair Bolsonaro lost an election and then allegedly incited his supporters to try to steal it. This week, Bolsonaro’s trial on accusations of fomenting a coup is entering its final stage. Accountability is now something they might consider in foreign countries, not here.