Late last week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) explained that he has started to steer the discussion in the direction of pushing for the disclosure of unreleased U.S. Capitol security footage from January 6, 2021.
While taking jabs at the January 6 Committee and it’s recent “report that’s written for a political basis,” McCarthy explained to reporters around Capitol Hill that members of the American Public “should see” what took place on that fateful day. “We’re looking through that,” he explained. “I want to be very thoughtful about it. But yes, I’m engaged to do that.”
.@SpeakerMcCarthy says he’s going to release all of the security footage from January 6. pic.twitter.com/RHaSnwJDAp
— The Dirty Truth (Josh) (@AKA_RealDirty) January 12, 2023
These statements come in the wake of comments made last week by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) that McCarthy “told us he’s going to get the evidence out in front of the American people and that means releasing the 14,000 hours of tapes that have been hidden.”
While taking part in an interview with Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, Gaetz expressed that the footage “would give more full context to that day rather than the cherry-picked moments the January 6 Committee tried to use to inflame and further divide our country.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz: The American people are finally going to get the truth about Jan 6. pic.twitter.com/Lcz2EdfwhI
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 10, 2023
Back on the 6th of January, 2021, a large group of people made their way into the U.S. Capitol, scaring legislators and disrupting their meeting to officially certify the 2020 election victory of President Joe Biden. A large bank of cameras located in and around the building was able to record well over 14,000 total hours of footage over the period of noon to eight in the evening that day, as highlighted by officials with Capitol Police. Despite the fact that a number of congressional committees under the control of Democrats, law enforcement, and many more were allowed to freely access the video archive, officials with the Capitol Police issued severe warnings to the attorneys for January 6 defendants that they should not be allowed access, even restricted access, without a number of “safeguards in place to prevent its copy and dissemination,” and the government highlighted what they called extreme national security warnings.
In the wake of over a full year and a half of intense investigation and hearings that saw a number of security video clips, the final report was officially released this past month by the January 6 Committee in which they put forth a recommendation of charges against former President Donald Trump, before starting to release a few dozen instances of witness materials. McCarthy was one of a few House Republicans which the January 6 Committee pushed for ethics sanctions after refusing to heed subpoenas.
A group of House Republicans carried out their own investigation without having subpoena power and released its own rebuttal report that, as the leader of the effort, Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) stated “exposes the partisanship, incompetence and indifference that led to the disaster on January 6 and it the leading role Speaker Pelosi and her office played in the security failure at the Capitol.”