- Clips will be posted on the Committee on House Administration website and much of the footage has already appeared
Speaker Mike Johnson announced on Friday that he would begin making all January 6 footage immediately available to the public, following a promise to right-wing parties. conservatives that started under former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The clips will be posted on the Committee on House Administration website and much of the more than 44,000 hours of security footage from January 6 has already gone up. About 90 hours of footage is expected Friday, with the remainder in the coming months.
The clips will blur the faces of private citizens to ensure no one is “targeted for any form of retaliation.” The speaker said that about five percent of the images would not be posted so as not to reveal sensitive security information “related to the architecture of the building.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., had first demanded McCarthy make the footage public during negotiations to give him the gavel.
Speaker Mike Johnson announced Friday that he would immediately make all footage from Jan. 6 available to the public, following a promise to right-wing conservatives that began under former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Johnson had promised last month to release all footage during his campaign for the gavel.
The speaker said the decision “will give millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest groups and the media the opportunity to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely on the interpretation of a small group of government officials.” ‘
From January 6, suspects and victims can request access to withheld images if they relate to a legal case.
In recent months, the House Administration Committee has only made footage available to members of the media, criminal defendants and a few others.
In February, McCarthy gave the footage exclusively to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a move that was denounced by Democrats. Carlson played select segments of it on his former primetime show.
Republican hardliners welcomed Johnson’s announcement.
Former President Trump praised Johnson on Truth Social: “Congratulations to Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson for his courage and determination to release all the J6 tapes, which will explicitly reveal what really happened on January 6! ‘
‘He did what he said he would do. Good,” Rep. wrote. Chip Roy, R-Texas, at X.
“Thanks @SpeakerJohnson!” Gaetz said on X.