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U.S. Capitol Police officer cleared of wrongdoing in fatal shooting of woman during Capitol attack

InternationalApr 15. 2021Pro-Trump protesters clash with police during the tally of electoral votes on Jan. 6. Photo by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post.

By Keith L. Alexander, Justin Jouvenal, Spencer S. Hsu
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON – A U.S. Capitol Police officer has been cleared of criminal wrongdoing for fatally shooting Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt as she attempted to breach a set of doors deep in the Capitol during the January siege, federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia announced Wednesday.

Authorities determined that there was insufficient evidence to prove Babbitt’s civil rights were violated, and that it was reasonable for the officer to believe he was firing in self-defense or in defense of members of Congress and aides who were fleeing the House chamber. Prosecutors did not identify the officer.

The killing of the 35-year-old California native became one of the defining moments of the riot, after graphic videos of her shooting spread across social media and were replayed by news outlets.

Prosecutors notified a representative of Babbitt’s family of its findings Wednesday, the office of acting U.S. attorney Channing Phillips of the District said in a statement. The statement said the U.S. attorney’s office and the Justice Department have closed the investigation, “acknowledging the tragic loss of life and offering condolences” to Babbitt’s family.

Roger Witthoeft, Babbitt’s brother, said he was not happy that prosecutors decided not to charge the officer.

“In my eyes, everyone should stand before a jury to face justice. That decision shouldn’t be made behind the scenes. I think he should at least stand trial,” Witthoeft said.

“I love my sister and I’ll always remember her as a decent woman and patriot,” he said.

Mark Schamel, the Capitol Police officer’s attorney, credited his client with showing great restraint.

“His bravery on January 6 was nothing short of heroic,” Schamel said in a statement. “He stopped the rioters from gaining entry into the Speaker’s Lobby and saved the lives of countless members of Congress and the rioters. His heroism should be no surprise to those who know him.”

To convict law enforcement officers of civil rights violations, including shootings resulting in death, prosecutors must be able to prove that an officer used “objectively unreasonable” force and “willfully” used more force than he thought was necessary. The high bar of willfulness makes bringing charges against an officer difficult, and Wednesday’s outcome was not unexpected by legal observers under the circumstances.

Multiple cellphone videos captured the shooting as it unfolded on the afternoon of Jan. 6. Babbitt and a group of other rioters made their way inside the Capitol to barricaded doors leading to the Speaker’s Lobby, which is the hallway outside the House chamber where some lawmakers were sheltering during the siege.

Videos show the group pummeling the wood-and-glass doors with a helmet, feet and a flagpole. A Capitol Police officer in a suit and a surgical mask is seen standing in a doorway on the far side of the doors with his gun drawn.

The officer opened fire as Babbitt, who was wearing a Trump flag like a cape, attempted to crawl through one of the broken panes of the Speaker’s Lobby doors, video shows. Babbitt, who was hit in the shoulder, tumbled backward onto the floor.

The attorney for the officer, a lieutenant, said in a statement that the officer clearly identified himself and ordered rioters not to pass a barricade at the doors of the Speaker’s Lobby before firing. Other officers had also ordered Babbitt to stop and she broke multiple laws in attempting to enter the Speaker’s Lobby, according to the statement.

A group that included officers, rioters and a Hill staffer rushed to her aide, video shows. Two law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation have said that Babbitt was unarmed. She later died.

Babbitt was one of five people who authorities said died amid the chaos of the Capitol siege, including Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, whose remains lay in honor in the Capitol Rotunda in early February.

In death, Babbitt has become a martyr to many on the far right. Some even fashioned a flag that features a silhouette of a woman in front of a Capitol that is aflame. Below, it reads “Vengeance.”

Federal prosecutors have charged at least eight people who were in the crowd around Babbitt in the moments before she was shot. They include Christopher Ray Grider, a Texas winery owner who is accused of trying to kick in the Speaker’s Lobby doors; Zachary Jordan Alam, of Pennsylvania, who is accused of smashing the glass pane Babbitt attempted to crawl through; and Chad Barrett Jones, of Kentucky, who is accused of smashing another pane with a wood stick that had a Trump flag attached.

Authorities had suggested the possibility of bringing felony murder charges against rioters if Babbitt’s death was a foreseeable consequence of felony conduct by others, according to a person familiar with the matter. But they have since ruled out that possibility, given case law that allows such charges only in instances when an accomplice is responsible for a victim’s death, not a law enforcement officer.

District police are required by law to identify officers involved in serious uses of force within five business days of an incident. They are also required to release video from body cameras of the officers directly involved. The law only applies to District police. Capitol Police are not equipped with body cameras.

The law firm said it was keeping the officer’s name confidential because he has faced death threats.

Witthoeft, Babbitt’s brother, said it was “appalling” that the officer’s name had not been released “in this age when everything is public record.”

The three-month investigation was conducted by prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office’s public corruption and civil rights section. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the District police internal affairs bureau reviewed social media video footage, statements by witnesses including the shooter and other officers, physical evidence, and autopsy results, prosecutors said.

Criminal charges against police officers involved in on-duty fatalities are rare in the District. City records show that prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office have never filed criminal charges against a District police officer involved in a fatal on-duty shooting. Such historical data was not available regarding officers from other agencies.

Babbitt hailed from the San Diego area and became an ardent supporter of QAnon, an extremist ideology that the FBI has deemed a domestic terrorism threat, and a backer of President Donald Trump, her since-deleted Twitter account showed. She often echoed Trump’s baseless claims that November’s presidential election was stolen.

“Nothing will stop us . . . they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours . . . dark to light!” Babbitt tweeted the day before she died.

Babbitt spent more than a decade in the military, first in the Air Force and then in the Air National Guard, but she had discipline problems and didn’t advance far. Her ex-husband, Timothy McEntee, has said she served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

After leaving the military in 2016, Babbitt started a pool business with family members that struggled financially, and her Twitter account shows she became more interested in online misinformation and conservative causes.

In one video posted to social media, Babbitt rants loudly about the effects of immigrants on the U.S. economy. In a tweet, she called for then-Vice President Mike Pence to be arrested and charged with treason, presumably for not being supportive enough of Trump’s baseless claims of electoral fraud.

“She was never afraid to speak her mind,” McEntee told The Washington Post in a January text message.

Babbitt seemed to derive a sense of mission from the Jan. 6 protest. In the days leading up to it, she retweeted messages from other demonstrators who were traveling to Washington.

One read: “It will be 1776 all over again . . . only bigger and better.”

– – –

The Washington Post’s Tom Jackman contributed to this report.

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John Williamson, economist who devised ‘Washington Consensus’ model of reform, dies at 83

InternationalApr 15. 2021John Williamson

By Matt Schudel
The Washington Post

John Williamson, a British-born economist for the World Bank and other institutions and think tanks, who was best known for coining the term “Washington Consensus” to describe a set of reforms aimed at reinvigorating struggling economies in Latin America and other countries, died April 11 at his home in Chevy Chase, Md. He was 83.

He had multiple system atrophy, said his daughter, Theresa Williamson.

Dr. Williamson began his career as a college professor and had stints working for the British government, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, developing policies to help bolster economies of countries around the globe.

After teaching in Brazil, he joined the Washington-based Institute for International Economics – later renamed the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)- in 1981, where he developed ideas to strengthen global economies and markets.

In 1989, after consulting economists at the IMF, World Bank, Treasury Department and Federal Reserve, Williamson suggested a list of 10 ideas to spur and safeguard economic development. His prescription became known as the Washington Consensus, which was subject to mistrust and misinterpretation from the beginning.

In its original form, the Washington Consensus presented several basic macroeconomic ideas to restore stability in countries with shaky economies. The first and perhaps most important requisite was fiscal discipline. Others included directing public expenditures toward health care, education and infrastructure; lowering tax rates; privatizing state-run businesses to improve efficiency and reduce corruption; and securing private property rights.

“The three big ideas here are macroeconomic discipline, a market economy and openness to the world,” Williamson said at the time.

The policy goals were meant to be applied to Latin America, but quickly became seen as a template for global economic reform in the wake of the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe.

“Initially there was a lot of criticism from Latin America calling it the ‘Washington Consensus,’ ” Williamson said in a 2006 oral history interview with the World Bank, “because this suggested that there were some people sitting in Washington deciding what Latin America needed to do. And the critics thought that these reforms were being imposed, which wasn’t my perception of how things were in fact happening, and certainly not how they should have happened.”

His ideas, however well-intentioned, immediately ran into the roadblocks of reality. Left-wing populists such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela centralized many aspects of the national economy, and other reforms ran aground because of labor opposition, corruption and other deep-rooted institutional problems.

“The Washington Consensus had escaped my control and it had become whatever people meant by it,” Williamson said in a 2018 interview with the Center for Financial Stability.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote in his 2002 book “Globalization and Its Discontents” that fiscal conservatism, privatization and higher interest simply weren’t effective in economically underdeveloped countries. The Washington Consensus, he concluded, had left some countries worse off than they were before, with stagnant economic growth and weakened social safety nets.

But later studies by economists Kevin Grier and Robin Grier showed that countries that had maintained their long-term policies of economic reform had increased growth, income and other economic conditions.

“There’s no question that Latin America is doing much better than East Europe,” Williamson said in 2009 during another worldwide economic downturn. “There’s been much more restraint this time around in most of the countries. That’s what Latin America is benefiting from.”

John Williamson was born June 7, 1937, in Hereford, England. His father ran a plant nursery business, and his mother was a homemaker.

Williamson graduated from the London School of Economics in 1958, served two years in the British air force, then received a doctorate in economics from Princeton University in 1963. While teaching at the University of York in England in the mid-1960s, he developed the “crawling peg” theory, an economic model to maintain currency stability by limiting volatility in exchange rates.

Williamson worked for the British treasury department in the late 1960s, taught at the University of Warwick in England and had a two-year assignment with the IMF in Washington in the early 1970s. He taught at the Pontifical Catholic University from 1978 to 1981. During the 1990s, he spent three years working for the World Bank. He published more than a dozen books and wrote scores of scholarly articles before his retirement in 2012. His most recent books, “Growth-Linked Securities,” appeared in 2017.

Survivors include his wife of 47 years, the former Denise de Souza of Chevy Chase; three children, Andre Williamson of Silver Spring, Md., Daniel Williamson of Chevy Chase and Theresa Williamson of Rio de Janeiro; two sisters; and seven grandchildren.

DWilliamson was a dedicated conservationist and birdwatcher who had sightings of more than 4,000 species of birds in the 104 countries he had visited.

Partly for environmental reasons, he believed governments should impose stiff taxes on carbon emissions. He also saw another industry that he thought should be heavily taxed for the public good: advertising.

“One could easily envisage a 20 or 30 percent tax on advertising,” he said in a PIIE publication in 2012, “which would bring in a lot of money and would have beneficial effects in limiting the extent to which we are bombarded with these unnecessary things at the present time.”

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Biden selects Asian American outreach director

InternationalApr 15. 2021Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) at one point threatened to block future Biden nominees because of the lack of Asian American representation in the administration. (Reuters)

By Tyler Pager, Seung Min Kim
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden has selected Erika Moritsugu, vice president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, to serve as a senior adviser overseeing outreach to Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, the White House announced Wednesday.

The move comes after weeks of pressure from Asian American leaders to diversify the upper ranks of the White House.

Moritsugu is expected to report to Bruce Reed, Biden’s deputy chief of staff, with the rank of deputy assistant to the president, a person familiar with the announcement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said.

Moritsugu did not respond to a request for comment. Biden is scheduled to meet with the leadership team of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus in the Oval Office on Thursday.

Moritsugu previously worked at the Anti-Defamation League and served on the staffs of Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and former Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii.

She has also held various policy roles at the Democratic Policy Committee, worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama administration and oversaw Senate legislative affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

After the March 16 spa shootings in the Atlanta area, in which six Asian women were killed, Duckworth and Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, threatened to block future Biden nominees because of the dearth of representation in the administration. They withdrew that threat after receiving assurances that Biden would appoint a senior Asian American White House official.

As Biden started to roll out his Cabinet and senior staff during the presidential transition, Asian American leaders raised concerns about the lack of representation of people of Asian descent.

Other than Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden only has one other person of Asian descent in his Cabinet, Trade Representative Katherine Tai. Biden nominated Neera Tanden to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget, but she withdrew her nomination after bipartisan pushback from senators concerned about her sometimes hard-hitting Twitter feed.

Asian American leaders are now pushing Biden to nominate Nani Coloretti, a former Obama official, for the OMB spot.