The Washington Post published the
story of Ashley
Babbitt, the first dead in Congress, last Wednesday, recording angles from her stormy biography that ended on the threshold of the Capitol in Washington.
The politician she revered before every other politician lost the election, was heavily indebted, and her home state of California was closed again due to a virus she believed was a hoax.
Ashley, 35, was the first reported death on January 6, when rioters, instigated by President Donald Trump, overran Congress.
"It was great to see the president speak. We are now on the first road to Congress. Over 3 million people," she said, referring to a video that she posted on Facebook early Wednesday afternoon.
There was no crowd of 3 million, just a mob without law and no masks against the virus, numbering a few thousand.
Ashley's mission, which she announced repeatedly on social media, was to restore American democracy, but she was about to participate in riots that would go down in history as one of the most dangerous attacks on that democracy.
She found a purpose for her life
After a long but unremarkable military career in the Air Force and years of personal suffering, Ashley, a Southern California who once supported Barack Obama, believed she had found a purpose for her life.
Within hours, the case would bring a violent end to her life.
And in the coming days there will be others, Brian D. Seknick, 42, a Congressional police officer who died after being injured while trying to fend off the mob, Roseanne Boyland, Kevin D.
Grayson, and Benjamin Phillips, who died in a medical emergency during the chaos.
Police shot Ashley while trying to jump through the broken window of a door inside the Congress building, whose name would instantly become synonymous with the frenzied movement that has prompted thousands of Americans to desecrate a pillar of their state.
In the eyes of her comrades in the movement, Ashley was a martyr, and back in California, Roger Whithove, Babbitt's brother, didn't even know that she attended the protest before their father called him, in astonishment, to inform him of the news of the shooting, and found a video clip online.
"There was no question that she was my beautiful sister," Witthofeet recalls.
Loyalty to megalomania
Ashley's journey, illuminated by her intense social media activism, court and military records, and interviews with some of those who knew her, was one of the journeys of loyalty and enthusiasm for megalomania that only increased as Trump's fortunes waned.
The Kiwanon Organization has promoted the idea that Trump is America's savior (Getty Images)
She eagerly embraced the Kiwanon conspiracy theory, convinced that Trump was destined to defeat a gang of child abusers and Democrats who worshiped the Devil.
She thought Wednesday would be "the storm", when the legend (Kiwanon) says Trump will arrest and kill his opponents.
Long before she even embraced those ideas, Ashley was on a rocky road.
She was rebellious but loyal to her country, often unable to get along with those who shared her.
A self-proclaimed entrepreneur, she struggled in her attempts to run a small pool service company outside San Diego.
She served more than a decade in the armed forces but was enraged by the military hierarchy.
Six of those years were spent in an Air National Guard unit whose mission is to defend the Washington area and respond to civil unrest.
Nothing will stop us
Like many others, she believed that January 6 would not be a day of shame, but rather an end to her troubles.
She tweeted on January 5, "Nothing will stop us. They can try, but the storm is here as it descends on the capital in less than 24 hours .... From darkness to light," and also wrote, "Not at all afraid."
She was tired of her executive officer, it was in 2014, and she, along with much of her unit in the Air National Guard, which was stationed at Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE, hated him, according to a former sergeant in the unit who spoke on condition of anonymity, but despite her reputation Speaking candidly, she kept herself under surveillance.
Two former pilots who served with her said problems with discipline and disobedience hampered her career, and that she was demoted at least once.
Ashley left the Army in 2016 with the rank of senior pilot, a relatively low rank for someone who has spent more than a decade in uniform.
Some of those who served with Ashley kept in touch with her, and they remembered how she defended so vehemently the people she was looking after.
One of her fellow pilots said that within a few years of leaving the army, "she had a new goal, the goal of the Kiwanon organization."
The Kiwanon flag and slogan raised by those who stormed the Congress building on January 6 (Getty Images)
Today we save America
Ultimately, Ashley shared more than 8,600 tweets, providing a vivid description of her decline into a world of conspiracy theories and illusion, but her first message was directed at Trump, the man she believes was destined to save her country.
On October 31, 2016, she wrote: “#love,” next to Trump’s name and above a picture of 3 signs affixed to the “Make America Great Again” tree, and “Hillary to prison.”
A week later, on Election Day, I wrote to Trump again, “Today we save America from tyranny, complicity and corruption,” and when he won, she cried with joy.
She watched Fox News with passion, praising Tucker Carlson and other far-right media personalities on the network mocking liberals.
As a registered member of the Libertarian Party (the Liberal Party), a political party in the United States that promotes civil liberties, non-government interference in the economy and limiting the size and scope of government, she has not always despised Democrats, having announced at least 3 times in recent years that she voted for Obama.
Obsession with Internet advertising
But it turned into what she described as "the man we need now and for years to come," Donald Trump.
And her devotion intensified as she became more obsessed with baseless Internet propaganda, all during the collapse of her career.
She promoted the far-right's lies that Hillary Clinton had kidnapped children and described the left as modern-day slaves.
She appeared to be using the hashtag "Kiwanon" for the first time early last year, echoing the coded terms promoted by her most enthusiastic followers.
On February 24, she wrote "The best is yet to come," and "What darkness will appear."
Her brother Witthofeet said he didn't know much about this side of his sister.
He understood, as millions of people now understand, that she was a strong woman deeply devoted to Trump, but she did not impose politics on Whitthoft whom she preferred to talk to about surfing, hockey or comedy.
She was very compassionate
"She was excited, yeah, but she was also very compassionate," Witthofeet told the Washington Post reporter via text.
To him, she was optimistic and her work problems rarely surfaced, and her anger appeared to have intensified amid an epidemic that she insisted was exaggerated.
"We have been tricked," she wrote last July. "The sheep must wake up."
But in the week before her trip to Washington for the Trump rally, her online anger faded, replaced by joy and a new sense of mission.
She re-posted the tweets of dozens of personalities promoting Trump's demands that his supporters rally to cancel the elections, including Trump supporter Jack Busubik, Kiwanone activists, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump Jr.
“I will be there tomorrow,” she wrote on January 4, in response to another supporter heading to the capital.
Never write again
I got on a plane in San Diego the next morning and sat next to Will Carles, a USA Today journalist, who later filmed the moment before the pro-Trump rioters stormed into Congress.
Carles described her as "sociable and talkative" and said they talked about a seaside town in California that they both loved.
The next day, it was overcast.
Ashley was wearing a hooded jacket and wearing a backpack and carrying the American flag on her shoulders. She listened to the president telling her and many others that the country could only be restored by strength, not weakness, then she headed to the Congress building, and said in her last video on Facebook that she is surrounded by her "patriotic" colleagues .
"She loved her country, and was doing what she thought was right to support her country, joining like-minded people who also love their president and their country," her husband told Fox in San Diego.
Not long after two in the afternoon, her husband sent her a letter asking about her condition, but she did not write again.