(Ken Silva, Headline USA) At this rate, the Jan. 6 inmates rotting in prison will have served their entire sentences before all the footage from the Capitol Hill protest-turned-riot is released.
According to an analysis from CBS News, the House GOP has only released about 0.4% of the more than 44,000 hours of Jan. 6 footage. The report comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson claims to be keeping his promise to release all the videos.
CBS reported Wednesday that just about 162 hours of footage is available on a House Republican Rumble web page or on the House Administration Committee’s government site.
Citing multiple congressional staffers, CBS said one batch is the same 90-hour set previously made available to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The second batch is reportedly 24-hour chunks from three main security cameras.
A spokesman for GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, who oversees the subcommittee managing the footage, reportedly promised to upload new sets of video each week.
“Each video must be converted out of the proprietary CCTV format and into a format that can be uploaded. Unfortunately, when the video is converted, it doesn’t retain the time stamp,” the spokesman said, according to CBS. “This is an issue we are aware of and plan to embed time stamps in the videos in the future. For now, the title of each video indicates down to the millisecond what time the clips start.”
Officials reportedly told CBS that “the task of posting the footage is daunting and has no firm deadline for completion.”
But that’s not good enough for Jan. 6 defendants and other MAGA supporters.
“The task doesn’t have to be daunting,” Jan. 6 defendant William Pope said on Twitter. “Congress could transfer all the video directly to a web server very quickly. But they are dragging their feet and blurring feds!”
Pope was referencing the fact that many faces in the released footage have been blurred. To MAGA supporters and others, this defeats the point of releasing the footage—which was to spot possible undercover informants and agent provocateurs in the crowd. It’s also costly and time-consuming, as evidenced by Wednesday’s CBS report.
The limited footage released outside the Justice Department’s channels has been revelatory.
For instance, footage obtained by Tucker Carlson showed that Jacob Chansley—also known as QAnon Shaman—peacefully strolling through the Capitol with a police escort—undermining the narrative that he was a violent insurrectionist.
More substantially, Blaze Media claims to have reviewed footage that contradicts sworn testimony that a Capitol Police Special Agent gave at the Oath Keepers’ sedition trial last year.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
