House Speaker Mike Johnson said House Republicans are actively working on blurring the faces of Capitol protesters seen in the January 6 tapes before more footage is released so that the Department of Justice doesn’t bring forward more charges.
“We have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ and to have other concerns and problems,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday.
“We’re working steadily on it. And we’ve hired additional personnel to do that,” he added. “And all of those tapes, ultimately at the end, will be out so everybody can see them.”
Johnson’s comments come more than two weeks after he first announced that the House GOP would start immediately releasing the U.S. Capitol Police’s January 6 footage to the public. About 90 of the estimated 44,000 hours were released on November 17, and the remaining hours will be released in the coming months. The initial tranche of footage can be viewed on the House Administration Committee’s website.
At the time of the announcement, the House speaker promised the tapes would show blurred faces to avoid any further retaliation against the January 6 defendants, adding that five percent of the footage wouldn’t be released because it “may involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture.”
After Johnson provided the update on Tuesday, his deputy chief for communications clarified that people’s faces will be blurred “to prevent all forms of retaliation against private citizens from any non-governmental actors” and that the DOJ “already has access to raw footage” from that day.
Over 1,200 defendants have been charged for participating in the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, and more than 400 have been sentenced to periods of incarceration as of November 6, according to the DOJ. Many more are expected to be arrested.
“We want the American people to draw their own conclusions,” Johnson said of the January 6 footage. “I don’t think partisan elected officials in Washington should present a narrative and expect that it should be seen as the ultimate truth.”