Republican propagandist Jon Turley misrepresents US law to try to attack the officer who defended US lawmakers from violent mob of insurrectionists

 

This article is a break from the Unified Theory of Fascism series. We'll be returning to that series next week. 

    TheHill.com legal propagandist Jonathan Turley recently posted an article questioning the DC Capitol Police decision not to press charges against the police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt. In this article I will review Turley's argument, and show how he misrepresents the relevant case-law, to try to promote a right-wing narrative. 

    The propaganda begins with Turley's choice of a title. The piece appears on TheHill website with the title: "Justified shooting or fair game? Shooter of Ashli Babbitt makes shocking admission..." First off, the officer was employed by the US Capitol Police and was tasked with protecting lawmakers against any domestic threat. He was doing his job. The use of the term "game" conjures up an idea of going hunting, a la Richard Connell's famous short-story "The Most Dangerous Game". Turley is turning up the dishonesty, and abandoning all sense of legal or academic integrity with the very first words of the piece. 

    In the first paragraph Turley trivializes the officers responsibility as a Capitol Police officer by using the attenuated quote "that's my job," and fails to offer a comprehensive description of the role of Capitol Police. This is a rhetorical tactic intended to diminish the officer's credibility and make his statements appear flippant and poorly supported. 

    Turley goes on to assert that the Babbitt shooting "contradicted standards on the use of lethal force by law enforcement," which is an assertion without evidence and entirely incorrect, and then he pivots back to "But what was breathtaking about Byrd’s interview was that he confirmed the worst suspicions about the shooting and raised serious questions over the incident reviews by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and, most recently, the Capitol Police," another assertion without evidence intended to diminish the officer's credibility. So right away we see that Turley has abandoned all sense of objectivity as a "legal expert", and is playing the role of a prosecutor who is well versed in propaganda tactics, and who is perfectly willing to misrepresent US law. 

    Turley's recount of the events of the day in the following few paragraphs contains a number of minor misrepresentations, but the key thing that's wrong about his article, and which demonstrates how he is a right-wing propagandist and not a credible legal analyst is his misrepresentation of the Supreme Court Case Graham v. Connor. That case resulted in a unanimous opinion from the Supreme Court and specifies that use of lethal force must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene. Given that the Capitol Police review board determined that the officer had not used excessive force, their opinion must be respected. Additionally, in order to apply an objective reasonableness standard, we have to consider the conditions that applied in this particular situation - something that Turley completely fails to do in his article. The US Capitol Police are tasked with protecting members of Congress from any threat. Officer Byrd reported that at the time he fired his weapon, he was standing right outside a door that led to the Congressional chamber, and he knew that lawmakers were in the process of evaluating. At that time he had heard multiple reports over his radio that insurrectionists were shouting verbal threats, including telling Capitol Police officers "you're going to die tonight", and shouting "hang Mike Pence" and "we're going to murder that bitch Pelosi". We know that those statements were made because they were caught on video and audio recordings and presented as evidence in the prosecution of several Capitol rioters. Therefore, given the unique role that the Capitol Police play, the fact that rioters were in the process of entering a Federal Building that had been declared under lockdown, that there were multiple verbal threats suggesting intent to cause physical harm to Mike Pence and members of Congress, and that Officer Byrd was standing outside a door that led to the Congressional Chamber, it was perfectly reasonable for him, given those circumstances, to feel that use of force was necessary to prevent his position from being over-run by the mob, so that rioters could enter the Congressional Chamber in time to apprehend lawmakers, and inflict violent beatings, and possibly even murder members of Congress. Turley's argument willfully omits all of those conditions, fails to address the objective reasonableness standard in Graham v. Connor, and falsely asserts that the officer's use of force was not supported by Supreme Court Precedent. 

    Turley then makes use of a false equivalence by trying to equate the Capitol Police Officer's actions to a case involving William "Ben" Darby, an officer who shot a suicidal man as he was threatening to kill himself. This is another gross misrepresentation as in that case, the man Darby shot represented no immediate threat to anyone other than himself. He was not in the process of trying to attack a government official, or any other person, so Turley's false equivalence is a pointless distraction, and an attempt to muddy the waters. 

    Turley again misrepresents the case by quoting the officer: "'I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions are.' So, Byrd admitted he did not see a weapon or an immediate threat from Babbitt beyond her trying to enter through the window. " This is another misrepresentation of the law, as courts have routinely cleared police officers who fired on individuals whose hands were concealed. Also, given the context of the confrontation, the officer did not have to see Babbit's hands to establish that she was a threat. She was entering through a broken window, at the head of a mob that was known to be attacking Capitol Police officers at entry-ways throughout the Capitol complex and making numerous verbal threats against Mike Pence and Congressional lawmakers. The notion that whether or not the officer had objective reason to believe that the mob Babbitt was leading had intent to cause physical harm to lawmakers was contingent upon what she was carrying in her hand at that exact moment is farcical. 

    Turley then attempts a bit of hysteria by claiming: "Legal experts and the media have avoided the obvious implications of the two reviews in the Babbitt shooting. Under this standard, hundreds of rioters could have been gunned down on Jan. 6..." and the fact is he's correct. Capitol Police are being attacked by conservatives for their actions that day, when in reality, they should be lauded for demonstrating such a high degree of restraint. Given that Capitol Police officers were being beaten with polls, sprayed with pepper spray, and that pro-Trump insurrectionists were attempting to breach a Federal building that was declared to be under lockdown, Capitol Police could have opened fire and mowed down hundreds of Trump supporters that day, and their actions would have been perfectly legal under the objective reasonable standard outlined in Graham v. Connor. 

    Turley finishes his piece by throwing red meat at the conservative base and trying to equate January 6th with the George Floyd protests from last summer. That comparison fails for several reasons. First is that violence against police officers and cases of arson during the George Floyd protests were ultimately discovered to be the work of right-wing extremists who infiltrated the protests for the purpose of trying to incite a more violent response from police. That was established in the case of California shooter Steven Carrillo and traveling Texas arsonist Ivan Harrison Hunter. Interestingly, Turley then contradicts his earlier argument by stating: "officers in those cities would not have been required to see a weapon in order to use lethal force in defending buildings." Naturally, if Turley were to make that kind of error in court, he would be asked why it's not necessary to see the hands of a person who is on the sidewalk outside of a Federal Building before using lethal violence, but it suddenly becomes necessary once that person has broken a window and is actually entering that building?  Turley would have no answer, because there isn't one. He just flat out contradicted himself. 

    Turley then tries to defame the officers credibility by bringing up a minor incident regarding leaving his weapon in a bathroom on the US Capitol Complex. The problem is that has nothing to do with this particular incident, and the conditions described in the "objective reasonableness" standard argument above already cleared the officer. If Republicans are such sticklers for the issue of leaving a firearm in the wrong place then they never would have elected NY-24 Representative John Katko, who during the time he was a Federal Prosecutor left his firearm inside of his vehicle, which led to the firearm being stolen and later showing up at a crime scene in the Syracuse area. 

    Turley then closes his argument by stating that he condemned the January 6th insurrection but does not think that "a riot should be license to use lethal force", yet Turley's concern is obviously arbitrary and capricious, as he never published an article questioning the logic of Florida's HB-60 anti-protest law, and he also repeatedly attacked civil rights activists who participated in the George Floyd protests, demonstrating the arbitrary and capricious nature of his concern. 

    Jonathan Turley is a right-wing stooge who has zero credibility. The fact that he would write such ridiculous tripe shows why his career has deteriorated from his former days of being a respected ABC News analyst to being a right-wing legal propagandist at the same site that gave us John Solomon's "Uranium One" conspiracy theory, and Rudy Giuliani's "Huntergate" nonsense. It was recently announced that ardent Trump stooge Johnathon Finkelstein sold TheHill to Nexstar Media Group. Maybe the new management will finally give Turley the boot and find someone who has at least a shred of journalistic and legal credibility. 

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Image Credit: District of Columbia Courthouse, Washington DC. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_courthouses#/media/File:District_of_Columbia_Court_of_Appeals.JPG