“There was no reason Ashli should have lost her life that day. We must all demand justice for Ashli” - Donald Trump

Two friends decide to rob a bank together. One enters the bank and the other stays in the car as the getaway driver. When things go wrong and the police show up the driver leaves the scene. Shortly afterward his friend gets into a shootout with law enforcement and ends up dead. When the driver is eventually arrested he is charged with the murder of his friend under the premise that without the initial crime, he would still be alive.

On January 6, 2021, Trump did a lot more than drive the getaway car. With a plan years in the making, he had spent the weeks after the 2020 election rejecting the will of the voters and presenting theories to his supporters about how he had been cheated out of a certain win. The fact that Trump had no evidence to support his accusations resulted in at least 166 court rulings against him. With the Electoral College votes already cast, Trump was quickly running out of time as Mike Pence headed to the Capitol on January 6 for the ceremonial counting of the votes.

With his fragile ego unable to accept the loss, Trump tried a Hail Mary attempt at retaining power and organized a rally in support of his wild conspiracy theories on the morning of the count. The defeated president took to Twitter to invite his supporters to the event, telling them to “Be there, [it] will be wild!”

In a speech that used the word “fight” 23 times, he fed the assembled crowd a diet of conspiracy theories. He told his gathered supporters that "if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.” He ended with marching orders: “we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we're going to the Capitol, and we're going to try and give.”

Probably due to bone spurs, Trump did not take that walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. His agitated masses did and quickly overtook the police barricades surrounding the capitol. Included in the mob was Ashli Babbitt, who was high on QAnon Conspiracy Theories and convinced that the election was stolen. When she tried to climb through a window into a hallway that was just yards from where legislators were located, she was told to stop. She did not listen and was shot and killed. The mob’s advance was stopped. 

“That [Ashli Babbitt] is dead is her fault, and Trump’s fault." She decided to accept Trump’s lie and follow him into battle and for that she holds personal responsibility. But the fact cannot be ignored that without Trump’s call for an insurrection, Babbitt would have never been in that building illegally. Babbitt paid the ultimate price for her mistakes, but justice demands that Trump pay a price for spreading the lies that led to her death. He should be charged with her murder.

Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for students with special education needs and public education. He was elected to the Northridge East Neighborhood Council and is the Education Chair. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD’s District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him “a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles.” For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.