The Washington, D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office quietly updated the official cause of death for January 6th rioter Ashli Babbitt from “gunshot wound to the shoulder” to “intentional homicide,” adding a note that reads, “Well, yeah. That was kind of obvious.”
The change comes nearly three years after Babbitt was shot while attempting to climb through a smashed window into the Speaker’s Lobby of the U.S. Capitol, during what historians will almost definitely not refer to as a “peaceful protest.” The shooter, Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd, was cleared of wrongdoing by multiple internal reviews, an external review, a bipartisan review, and a guy named Joe Barron who saw the video and said, “Yeah, that tracks.”
But now, in a newly released statement, the medical examiner admits the classification was “too generic” and wanted to be more precise. “The term ‘gunshot wound’ doesn’t fully capture the nuance of a situation where a federal officer makes a split-second decision to shoot an unarmed woman wearing a Trump cape while a mob screams ‘Hang Mike Pence,’” said Deputy Examiner Art Tubolls, who doubles as a Chick-fil-A night manager and part-time paranormal investigator.
Of course, the reclassification has reignited outrage among people who still haven’t accepted that Trump lost in 2020, 2022, or 2024. “This proves she was murdered!” shouted one shirtless man standing outside the Capitol with an American flag duct-taped to a hockey stick. “Now we can finally prosecute someone—anyone—except Trump.”
Unfortunately for those folks, the new classification still won’t lead to any charges. That’s because in the same updated report, the medical examiner notes that while the killing was “intentional,” the root cause of Babbitt’s death wasn’t Lt. Byrd at all—it was, and we quote, “the direct result of prolonged exposure to Trumpism.”
“In layman’s terms,” said Tubolls, “if she hadn’t been radicalized by YouTube rabbit holes, Facebook conspiracy threads, and a grown man who sells $400 golden sneakers with his own name on them, she’d probably still be alive.”
This opinion was confirmed by an anonymous DOJ official who spoke on condition of anonymity, only to immediately be identified by his Uber Eats driver, who says he heard him say “Trump started it” while picking up pad thai from a federal building.
As a result, the case has been officially closed. Again. For the third time. But this time with more dramatic wording and an official-looking seal from the Office of Extremely Redundant Affairs.
Lt. Michael Byrd, who remains on duty, said he’s “relieved but exhausted” and plans to take a few weeks off to watch HGTV and forget that any of this ever happened. Asked if he had anything to say to Babbitt’s supporters, he simply replied, “Maybe sit this one out, folks.”
God Bless America.
