The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, announced this Friday that he will authorize the release of thousands of hours of footage from the assault on the United States Capitol that occurred on January 6, 2021, thus fulfilling a promise he made to members of his party during his campaign for office.
"This decision will give millions of Americans, protesters [charged with seditious conspiracy], public interest organizations and the media the ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely on interpretation from a small group of government officials," Johnson said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
The newly elected speaker commented that a first installment of security images, around 90 hours, will be published on a public committee website early Saturday morning, and it is expected that the rest of the more than 40,000 hours will be published in the next few years. months. An unprecedented measure in the US. Meanwhile, a public viewing room will be established in the Capitol to view the images.
Johnson commented, in a press conference, that work is being done to process the images with the aim of blurring the faces of citizens and thus "prevent them from being subject to reprisals of any kind." He added that 5% of the content will not be made public as it "may involve sensitive security information related to the architecture of the building."
In this sense. By expanding this access to the general public, Johnson is fulfilling one of the promises he made last month to the most conservative members of his party, including Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who orchestrated the impeachment of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. . The move will give the general public a high level of access to sensitive and explicit security footage from January 6, which many critics have warned could be in jeopardy if it falls into the wrong hands. The thousands of hours of video detail not only the shocking assault the mob carried out on the US Capitol Police by storming the building, but also how the rioters gained access to the building and the routes lawmakers took to flee. to a safe place.
In recent months, the Republican-led House of Representatives has made a few hours of footage available by appointment only to journalists, protesters - charged in connection with the assault - and a limited number of unspecified guests. According to some agencies, in these images you can see an aerial view of the Capitol complex, while hundreds of followers of former President Donald Trump stormed the building - who questioned the victory of Democrat Joe Biden -, violently attacked private security agents and police for ending up accessing the building through windows and doors.
In February, McCarthy granted then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to video history, a move Democrats quickly condemned as a "serious" security breach with potentially dangerous consequences. The journalist, a beacon of the American far-right, broadcast a report on his prime-time show Tucker Carlson Tonight last spring, which conveyed a narrative favorable to former President Donald Trump: he showed the protesters walking calmly, but he did not show the confrontations with the police or the destruction and omitted the coercion and threats to congressmen on a dark day in the history of the country where five people died and some 140 agents were seriously injured. In April, Carlson and Fox agreed to "part ways" following the lawsuit over spreading Trump's big lie.
Precisely. Donald Trump will be tried in Washington in March 2024 for conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election. More than 1,200 people have been arrested in connection with the January 6, 2021 assault.
