Paul Gosar and a few right wing other ding bats think that Ashli Babbitt was an innocent bystander, and that Capitol police were "laying in wait" to ambush her.
To quote Rachel Maddow , "horse puckey".
Gosar has demanded that the shooter's identity be released - which is NOT going to happen - at least not officially.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the officer's action prevented for MORE damage that would have occurred if he had not taken action.
On Monday, the Capitol Police admitted what the rest of the reality-based world already knew: The officer who shot Jan. 6 insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt as she tried to barrel through a broken window in the Capitol building did nothing wrong. Four months after the Justice Department decided against prosecuting the cop, an internal Capitol Police review not only found that the officer didn’t violate internal policy but that his actions almost certainly saved the lives of lawmakers and staffers.
Hours after that decision came down, The Los Angeles Times columnist and former editorial page editor Nicholas Goldberg went further. He argued that by shooting Babbitt, that cop might have very well kept the insurrection from spiraling completely out of control.
By now, you know that Donald Trump and his most diehard supporters have branded Babbitt’s death as manslaughter at best and murder at worst. But as Goldberg notes, the video shows anything but a homicide. For starters, Babbitt was front and center in a particularly intimidating moment during the insurrection.
At the same time, a Capitol Police lieutenant is pointing his gun at the mob—as Goldberg puts it, “an unmistakable warning to stay back.” Babbitt would have almost certainly recognized from her Air Force days when she served as a security guard.
Instead, as we now know, Babbitt got two of her fellow “patriots” to boost her through a broken window in the Speaker’s Lobby. Just as she barrels through, a single shot goes off, and Babbitt falls to the floor—as we now know, mortally wounded.
Goldberg points out that several lawmakers were visible on the other side of that door. That led him to this stark conclusion—had Babbitt made it through, it would have been “inevitable” that the mob behind her would have followed her. His “normal human instinct” led him to draw a further conclusion.
Babbitt’s shooting appears to have stopped the forward movement of the crowd. All this happened on a day when the vice president’s life had been threatened, and when police were being savagely beaten elsewhere in the building.
Could the mob possibly have been stopped without Babbitt’s death? Maybe. Perhaps there was a way to have avoided deadly force. But it’s not clear to me what that way would have been — and it is clear that if Babbitt had gone through that doorway, an out-of-control situation would have deteriorated further.
Due in part to the likes of Donald Trump, Paul Gosar, and other public and media figures irately demanding it, Capitol Police have not released the officer’s name. At considerable risk to his safety, the officer will reveal his identity for the first time in a Thursday night interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt. Hopefully, we can get a more accurate glimpse of what he saw that day—and finally knock down, once and for all, any talk of Babbitt being a martyr.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/8/25/2048221/-L-A-Times-Cop-who-shot-Ashli-Babbitt-may-have-kept-insurrection-from-REALLY-getting-out-of-hand?detail=emaildkre