(BrightPress.org) – Conservative activists demanding the release of all the January 6th surveillance footage may finally see their request granted. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) broke the news on Sirius XM’s “The Wilkow Majority” on Thursday, November 16th. The relevant clip was posted to X.
Independent observers and Trump supporters were elated by the some 40,000 hours of footage made available to Tucker Carlson’s team at Fox News earlier this year. Carlson presented a series of clips that countered Democrats’ narrative that January 6th was a “violent riot” at the Capitol.
While violence did occur, Carlson showed that the vast majority of the footage showed peacefully assembled protesters walking through the building in an orderly manner. He even presented clips of ‘Qanon Shaman’ Jacob Chansley being escorted by police from room to room. Chansley was freed from prison shortly after the footage aired.
Speaker McCarthy never made any additional footage available, while Speaker Johnson has agreed to release the footage. Gaetz said the footage will be put online on a website anyone can access soon, and that batches of footage will go up over time.
Critics slammed the decision as “dangerous and irresponsible,” claiming that the objections of the D.C. Capitol Police should be enough to prevent disclosure. Ranking Democrats complained about a nebulous “security risk” posed by releasing the footage without citing specific concerns.
Johnson said that the footage would be altered to blur the faces of private citizens so it could be used for targeted harassment. He also said that some 5% of the footage would be withheld to avoid giving any key details of sensitive architecture.
Democrats have consistently fought against the public release of any footage they haven’t carefully edited for public consumption. After Carlson released a counter-narrative, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for his censure. Carlson was pulled off the air a few months later. Fox has further attempted to restrict his ability to broadcast on X, however, those efforts haven’t been successful.
Copyright 2023, BrightPress.org
