When Ashli Babbit's mother began memorializing her daughter's Jan. 6 death last month at the Central Detention Facility in Washington, D.C., it was only going to be for 30 days.
The California resident has since decided to extend her stay on the East Coast through September.
“I am going back to San Diego to grab my dog and coming right back,” Babbit's mother, Micki Witthoeft, said this week. “We will be outside the jail for the month of September.”
Jan 6 defendant supporters
| Witthoeft
That's where many of Babbit’s fellows, known as Jan. 6 "insurrection" defendants, are incarcerated.
“I don't feel like we're done here,” Witthoeft told the Southern California Record. “The Jan. 6 protesters in the D.C. gulag are not allowed to have visitors and yet while we're here in our little barricaded-off area that they keep us in, we see everybody else walk right in to visit with their people in the jail.”
Members of the U.S. Senate and House will reconvene on Sept. 13.
“We want to ask questions of our Congress people,” Witthoeft said. “Why can’t these men and women have visitors? We're going to knock on their doors and ask.”
Babbit was shot and killed by Lt. Michael Leroy Byrd, a 28-year-veteran of the Capitol Police after she tried to climb through the shattered window of a door leading into the House of Representatives on that fateful day.
Witthoeft and other Jan. 6 supporters have been meeting daily at 7 p.m. behind the jail where they sing patriotic songs, including the National Anthem, so that Jan. 6 defendants in the jail will hear and be heartened. The event is documented on a website called www.4Ashli.com.
Some 65 protesters who were at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in support of former President Trump have received jail or prison time, according to media reports.
Kyle Fitzsimons, 38, of Lebanon, Maine, was among those who were arrested. However, when Witthoeft tried to support him by attending his trial last week, she was nearly denied entry because she was wearing a shirt with her daughter’s face printed on it.
“When I turned my shirt inside out, they let me in,” she said. “The court doesn’t allow t-shirts banners, flags, or hats with slogans that support one side or the other, but it was simply just a picture of Ashli on my shirt with her date of death and date of birth.”
The gathering has also been challenged by counter-protesters.
“They came Saturday and screamed out ugly things for an hour and then when their hour was up, they left so I think they get paid,” Witthoeft added. “They look like drug-addicted little girls to me but I don't know. They say things like ‘F*ck your Jesus. Ashli deserved to die’ and that I'm a bad mother because I wasn't there on Jan. 6.”