Last Updated on January 7, 2025
A notoriously anti-MAGA Senator from Oklahoma praised Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd for killing Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6, 2021, exactly four years ago.
“They were trying to come through the front door, which is where I was at in the chamber, and in the back they were trying to come through the speaker’s lobby, and that’s problematic when you’re trying to defend two fronts,” then-congressman Markwayne Mullen (R-OK) told ABC in the immediate aftermath of the mostly peaceful protest.
“When they broke the glass in the back, the (police) lieutenant that was there, him and I already had multiple conversations prior to this, and he didn’t have a choice at that time,” he said. “The mob was going to come through the door, there was a lot of members and staff that were in danger at the time. And when he [drew] his weapon, that’s a decision that’s very hard for anyone to make and, once you draw your weapon like that, you have to defend yourself with deadly force.
He later added that Byrd’s killing of Babbitt “saved people’s lives even more,” despite the fact that Babbitt was the only one killed on J6.
Mullin has also joined Democrats in voting to send tons of foreign aid to Ukraine.
Just as alarming, Sen. Markwayne Mullen waited only one month before signaling that his fellow senators, and presumably the rest of Congress do not intend to pursue retribution for the violence and weaponization of the federal government against American citizens.
WATCH:
MarkWayne signals that Congress DOES NOT intend to pursue Retribution. https://t.co/PXpfJJP1du
— National File (@NationalFile) December 8, 2024
Babbitt was a U.S. Air Force veteran who was unarmed when Byrd killed her outside the Capitol Building where conservatives protested the certification of the 2020 election results after courts refused to hear any evidence of potential fraud in that election.
Mullin recently worked against former congressman and Trump ally Matt Gaetz, who President-Elect Donald Trump tapped to be Attorney General, advocating alongside Democrats for the release of a House Ethics Committee investigation into Gaetz during what would have been Gaetz’s Senate confirmation process.
Mullin had a longstanding personal grudge against Gaetz, one time saying, “We had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor that all of us had walked away, of the girls that he had slept with,” and “this is the type of individual Matt Gaetz is.”
Gaetz eventually chose to drop out of the running for the position.
Mullin has a history of unhinged behavior, including when in November 2023 during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing, challenged Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien to a physical fight.
