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Speaker Johnson Releases 5,000 More Hours of Jan. 6 Security Footage

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


In keeping with his previous promise to release more security footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol Building, House Speaker Mike Johnson made an additional 5,000 hours of video available on Friday, according to a report.

Just the News noted that the additional video is about 208 straight days of viewing, and it is being released by the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee.

“House Republicans again commend subcommittee Chairman Barry Loudermilk and the entire Committee on House Administration for their ongoing commitment to ensuring that there is full transparency surrounding the events of January 6,” Johnson said in a statement, the outlet reported.

The release comes after Johnson stated in November 2023 his intention to make the January 6, 2021, tapes accessible to the American public. It follows the initial release of 90 hours of footage.

Just the News reported that there appears to be more video than what was released on Friday as the subcommittee vowed to “continue to release the remaining footage online as expeditiously as possible so that it is accessible to every American.”

The outlet added that some of the new video released on Friday was previously released but was blurry and since reloaded in a bid to make it clearer.

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The link to the footage can be found here.

“I appreciate Speaker Johnson’s continued support of our efforts and his resolute commitment to full transparency for the American people,” Loudermilk said. “Today’s decision will significantly expedite CCTV footage releases, all of which will be made available to the American public within the next few months without blurring or editing. The first batch is already available on our Rumble page.”

Last month, House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) tore into the Nancy Pelosi-picked Select Committee on January 6 for reportedly deleting or password-protecting some two terabytes worth of data just days before Republicans took over the House a year ago.

Earlier this week, the House Administration Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee, responsible for investigating both the 2021 Capitol riot and the prior Democrat-led inquiry into the riot, discovered that during the chamber’s transition to GOP control in January 2023, over 100 files were encrypted and deleted from hard drives, the New York Post reported.

The select committee was expected to provide Republican Chairman Barry Loudermilk of Georgia with four terabytes of archived data. The outlet, however, reported that his committee only received two terabytes of data.

In an X post, Stefanik ripped the committee, of which former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) was a member.

“As I said from day one, Nancy Pelosi’s sham January 6th Committee was illegitimate and unconstitutional. It should come as a surprise to no one that Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney’s fake committee illegally deleted records of their sham investigation and obstructed justice,” Stefanik wrote in a post to X Tuesday. “The American people deserve full transparency.”

Cheney responded and linked to a statement that Stefanik made on the day of the Capitol riot.

“This is what ⁦⁦@EliseStefanik said, in a rare moment of honesty, about the January 6 attack on our Capitol,” Cheney wrote. “One day she will have to explain how and why she morphed into a total crackpot. History, and our children, deserve to know.”

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In her previous statement, the New York Republican referred to the riots as “a truly tragic day for America.”

In a statement to The Hill, a spokesperson for Stefanik dismissed Cheney’s remark.

“Liz Cheney’s only remaining relevance is that she will soon have to answer for her role in deleting and hiding evidence from the investigation into the sham January 6 Select Committee,” the spokesperson said.

Stefanik released a statement ahead of the one-year anniversary of Jan. 6, calling for transparency and emphasizing the Capitol’s lack of security that day.

“It is unacceptable that one year later the American people still do not have answers as to why the Capitol was left so vulnerable and how to ensure it never happens again,” she wrote.