(Ken Silva, Headline USA) House Speaker Mike Johnson is claiming to have kept his promise to release thousands of hours of footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill protest-turned-riot.
However, Johnson is blurring out faces of many people in the footage.
“As you know, 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,” Johnson said Tuesday during a press conference.
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.
Jan. 6 defendant William Pope, who’s been calling for all the footage to be released at once, noted the flaws in Johnson’s reasoning.
“Johnson is flat out lying about concerns people might be charged if the footage isn’t blurred. Congress already gave all the unblurred video to the DOJ!” he said.
1. Don't censor, blur, or omit anything. The entire video truth of J6 needs to be available to the American public. Also, anything you blur or cut out will lead to conspiracy theories about what Republicans are trying to hide. Years from now, historians will still be critical!
— 🇺🇸 (@FreeStateWill) November 18, 2023
Along with concealing the identities of possible government assets, others have noted that the process of blurring out faces is extremely time-consuming and costly.
“That is a remarkably… ambitious … goal. To screen, edit, ‘blur,’ and post thousands of hours of video… in the matter of months,” CBS reporter Scott MacFarlane noted. “If we sat down right now .. just to watch 44,000 hours of video. Just to watch it. It would take five years to do so.”
To date, Johnson has released just over 90 hours of the 44,000 hours of total footage.
However, 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.
