Photograph: Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/ShutterstockMike Johnson to release 44,000 hours of sensitive footage on January 6
US House Speaker to speak speech fulfilled a promise to far-right Republicans, including Matt Gaetz and Donald Trump
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday he plans to publicly release thousands of hours of video footage of the attack on the US Capitol 6 January 2021, fulfilling a promise he made to his party's far-right members when he campaigned for his candidacy. current work.
“This decision will give millions of Americans, criminal defendants, community groups and the media the opportunity to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than relying on the interpretation of a small group of government officials,” Johnson said in a statement.
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The newly elected Speaker said the first batch of CCTV footage, about 90 hours, will be posted on the public committee's website on Friday, with the remaining 44,000 hours expected to be posted over the next few months. In the meantime, a public viewing room will be set up in the Capitol.
For the past several months, the GOP-led House Administration Committee has provided video by appointment only to members of the media, criminal defendants and a limited number of other people. The video showed some of the fighting up close and showed a bird's-eye view of the Capitol complex — one that visitors rarely see — as hundreds of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the building, brutally attacking police officers and breaking through windows and doors.
By expanding that access to the general public, Johnson is fulfilling one of the promises he made last month to his party's most conservative members, including Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, who engineered the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Both Gaetz and Trump, who is currently running for re-election while facing federal charges for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, applauded Johnson's decision.
In a post on his page On On the Truth Social platform, Trump congratulated the speaker “for having the courage and fortitude” to publish the footage.
Johnson's move will give the general public a staggering level of access to secret and explicit security camera footage of the Jan. 6 incident, which many critics warn could jeopardize the safety of staff and members of Congress at the Capitol complex if it falls into the wrong hands. Hours of footage detail not only the rioters' shocking attack on U.S. Capitol Police as they breached the building, but also how the rioters entered the building and the routes lawmakers took to flee to safety.
A Capitol Police request for comment was declined.
Johnson said Friday that the committee is processing the footage to blur people's faces «to avoid any people being retaliated against.» of any kind.» He added that approximately 5% of the footage will not be made public because it «may contain sensitive security information related to the architecture of the building.»
Gripping images and video of the attack by Trump supporters on the Capitol were widely shared by documentarians, news organizations and even the rioters themselves. But until this year, officials suppressed much of the surveillance video from hundreds of security cameras located in and around the Capitol.
In February, McCarthy gave then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to the footage, a move that Democrats quickly condemned as a «serious» security breach with potentially far-reaching consequences.
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The conservative commentator aired the first part of his prime-time show to millions of viewers in the spring, seeking to reconcile perceptions of the brutal, grueling siege that played out before the world's eyes into a Trump-friendly narrative.
It's all part of a larger effort by Republicans to reframe the narrative of the deadly insurrection following the House committee's findings on Jan. 6 last year. The select committee, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, spent months painstakingly documenting, through testimony and video evidence, how Trump rallied his supporters to march to the Capitol and «fight like hell» as Congress certified his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden.
The committee's final report, released last December, concluded that Trump was criminally involved in a «multi-part conspiracy» to overturn legal results of the 2020 presidential election and took no action to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.
The commission transferred the investigation to the Justice Department, recommending that federal prosecutors investigate four crimes against the former president , including assistance to the uprising. In August, Trump was indicted on four counts for his role in the attack as the Justice Department accused him of attacking the «core function» of democracy.
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