On Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) released to the public more than 40,000 hours of footage from the January 6, 2021, Capitol storming.
“Follow the link below to view the January 6th tapes for yourself,” Johnson posted on X, formerly Twitter. “To restore America’s trust and faith in their Government we must have transparency. This is another step towards keeping the promises I made when I was elected to be your Speaker.”
In a statement obtained by journalist Jake Sherman, Johnson reiterated his promise to make the footage accessible to the American people.
“Today, we will begin immediately posting video on a public website and move as quickly as possible to add to the website nearly all of the footage, more than 40,000 hours. In the meantime, a public viewing room will ensure that every citizen can view every minute of the videos uncensored,” Johnson said. “This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials.”
“I commend Chairman Loudermilk and his team for their diligent work to ensure the thousands of hours of videos are promptly processed to be uploaded to the committee’s public website,” he added. “Processing will involve blurring the faces of private citizens on the yet unreleased tapes to avoid any persons from being targeted for retaliation of any kind and segregating an estimated 5% of the videos that may involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture.”
Johnson made the footage publicly available after less than one month as speaker. His predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), previously made a small fraction of the footage available to media outlets.
This was a breaking news story. The details were periodically updated as more information became available.
