House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is honouring his pledge to make available almost all of the security camera footage from the day of the disturbance at the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
“I pledged to the American people when I ran for Speaker that the 44,000 hours of security camera footage from January 6, 2021, would be made available. Honesty and openness are essential. In an X post, Johnson stated, “Today, we will start posting video on a public website immediately and work as quickly as we can to add to the website nearly all of the footage, more than 40,000 hours.”
“Until then, all citizens will be able to watch every minute of the videos without any restrictions thanks to a public viewing room,” he said.
According to his administration, private persons’ faces will be obscured to prevent anyone from being “targeted for retaliation of any kind,” as reported by the UK’s Daily Mail. About 5% of the video, he continued, will not be made public in order to safeguard private security data.
Johnson continued on the X platform, saying, “I commend Chairman Loudermilk and his team for their diligent work to ensure the thousands of hours of videos are promptly processed to be uploaded to the committee’s public website.”
“Processing will involve blurring the faces of private citizens on the yet unreleased tapes to avoid any persons from being targeted for retaliation of any kind and segregating an estimated 5% of the videos that may involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture,” he said.
Johnson’s decision was applauded by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who spearheaded the drive to remove former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and has been driving the push to disclose all of the video evidence.
“While you may not always agree with @SpeakerJohnson, one thing is certain: HE WILL NOT LIE. He will follow through on his promises to do things. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you honouring your promise on the J6 tapes. In the DC swamp, it’s a welcome change of pace,” he tweeted.
fulfilling his promise to do so. Alright. Representative Chip Roy (R-Texas) added X.
When McCarthy was still the Speaker of the House, he showed some video to Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host at the time.
“Carlson TV producers were on Capitol Hill last week to begin digging through the trove, which includes multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds,” Axios co-founder Mike Allen reported. The upcoming weeks will see the beginning of the excerpts.
Not long after, a number of media outlets wrote to the leadership of the House, requesting equal access to the video.
McCarthy and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado), two Republicans in a group of approximately twenty who withheld their support for days, depriving him the speaker’s gavel, reportedly decided to do so, according to Gaetz.