Trump called Ashli Babbitt's mother to tell her he stands with the J6ers: report

The mother of slain Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt says President-elect Donald Trump called her to offer his support to her family, and to the defendants in general, reported NBC News on Thursday.

Per the report, Micki Witthoeft "said at a nightly vigil outside of the D.C. jail in support of Jan. 6 defendants on Wednesday that Trump had called her when she was in the back of an Uber with two other supporters of Jan. 6 defendants, coming back from laying down flowers in honor of her daughter," and that he told her to “Tell them I love them, to keep their chins up.”

Witthoeft, who has previously been arrested for blocking the street during another Jan. 6 anniversary, told the vigil-goers, "I know that he is still thinking about these guys, and I have a feeling it is going to be a happy day for us."

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Babbitt, an Air Force veteran from southern California, was among the crowd who broke into the Capitol to try to stop the certification of President Joe Biden's 2020 election victory. She was shot in the shoulder by a Capitol Police officer while trying to force her way through a window into the speaker's lobby as members of Congress were evacuating. Babbitt later died at a hospital.

She has since become a martyr to many on the far right, who consider her death to be a politically motivated murder. A Capitol Police investigation determined the shooting was within proper policy to protect members of Congress. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has even suggested that Trump's Justice Department bring a murder prosecution against the officer who took the shot.

Trump, for his part, has gone along with Babbitt's martyrdom, repeatedly attacking the Capitol Police for shooting her and even complaining about it at a presidential debate last year.