House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters on Tuesday that the Capitol security footage from Jan. 6, 2021, will be released with blurred faces to prevent retaliation against protestors, including from the Department of Justice (DOJ).
“We have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ and to have other concerns and problems,” he said at a press conference.
Mr. Johnson’s Deputy Chief for Communications Raj Shah clarified in a follow-up social media post that the DOJ already has access to all the raw footage.
“Faces are to be blurred from public viewing room footage to prevent all forms of retaliation against private citizens from any non-governmental actors. The Department of Justice already has access to raw footage from January 6, 2021,” he wrote.
According to the DOJ, as of Nov. 6, more than 1,202 defendants from nearly every state have been charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach. This includes more than 1,100 charged with entering or remaining in a restricted federal building. Some 680 defendants have pleaded guilty.
The first batch of footage, some 40,000 hours, was made available for public viewing in November. At the time, the announcement that faces would be blurred drew some criticism, including from a defendant who said “Americans will never trust blurred and edited J6 footage.”
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The footage is available for in-person viewing by appointment, and just around 100 hours have been made available online thus far. A congressional aide had told The Epoch Times that some footage may not be put online if deemed “security sensitive” or could “potentially provide a roadmap for doxxing and harassing private individuals.”
On Tuesday, Mr. Johnson said Congress has been working on making additional footage available.
“We’ve hired additional personnel to do that,” he said. “And all of those tapes, ultimately at the end, will be out so everybody can see them.”
The agreement to release the footage sparked discussion of reopening an investigation into the Capitol breach, and an investigation into the January 6 Select Committee that concluded President Donald Trump was responsible for the breach.
Mr. Johnson has said he intends to release the entirety of the security footage, some 44,000 hours, so that Americans can see for themselves “what happened that day.”
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), chair of the Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight, said much the same when announcing the online release of some footage.
“The goal of our investigation has been to provide the American people with transparency on what happened at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and this includes all official video from that day,” he stated. “We will continue loading video footage as we conduct our investigation and continue to review footage.”
Earlier this year, The Epoch Times gained access to the Capitol Police database of nearly 1,700 cameras for Jan. 5 and 6. Based on research done on video terminals on Capitol Hill, the newspaper requested and was given dozens of individual clips that were used in the special report “The Jan. 6 Tapes.”
The newspaper also used the previously unreleased video for a series of investigative articles on the deaths of Rosanne Boyland and Benjamin Philips and video surveillance of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.
Joseph Hanneman contributed to this report.
