House Panel Will Grant Access to More Footage Of Jan. 6 Riot

The House Administration Committee announced a new policy on Friday granting more access to Jan. 6, 2021, footage of the riot at the U.S. Capitol Building.

According to Roll Call, “news outlets and Jan. 6 defendants are among those who will be able to view footage” of the incident.

The policy will provide access to those deemed qualified to view the footage using terminals that will be managed by the committee, which obtained all Jan. 6-related materials as the 118th Congress began, per Republican House rules.

Roll Call adds:

Starting this month, members of the media, personnel from select nonprofit organizations, those charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and people injured on that day will be able to request access. Recording of materials will be prohibited and access will be subject to time restrictions, according to a statement from Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga, whose Oversight Subcommittee is spearheading the effort.
“House Republicans are continuing to deliver on our promise to bring transparency and accountability to the People’s House by increasing access to security footage of the U.S. Capitol from January 5th and 6th, 2021,” Loudermilk said in a statement, per Roll Call. “This announcement stands in stark contrast to the previous Democrat leadership, who blocked access to the footage and only showed carefully edited clips to the public.”’

A group of news outlets demanded access to the footage earlier this year after then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in February provided then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson with tens of thousands of hours of security footage from that day.

At the time, House Democrats and the leadership of the U.S. Capitol Police bashed the decision. Carlson utilized segments of the provided footage to argue that the riot was not as severe as Democrats and others made it out to be.
“I think the American public should actually see all what happened, instead of a report that’s written for a political basis,” McCarthy said at the time, lobbing some criticism of a Democrat-led House select committee investigation of the incident that was authorized by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Republicans who control the Administration Committee sought to reexamine the materials gathered by the Jan. 6 Committee as well as the incident itself. Loudermilk was investigated by the former committee after Democrats accused him of leading a “reconnaissance tour” the day before the riot; he released a batch of data in March that cleared him of wrongdoing.

In May, a pair of House Republicans called on Pelosi to testify about security failures that occurred at the Capitol ahead of the riot.

“The reason there wasn’t a proper security presence on that day goes right to the speaker’s staff and the speaker’s office. As you go back and look at the communications, there’s this pattern that develops where the Sergeant of Arms is meeting with Pelosi’s staff,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said.

“Many of those meetings, Republican staff wasn’t allowed to be there, but they had this pattern where everything had to run through her office, her staff before the Sergeant of Arms could make a decision,” he added.

Texas Republican Rep. Troy Nehls issued a similar response: “And Nancy Pelosi. You do have questions you need to answer.”

In testimony before a House committee over the summer, former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund claimed that three days before the riot at the Capitol, then-U.S. House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving rejected Sund’s request to deploy hundreds of National Guard soldiers because Irving told him then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would “never go for it,” The Epoch Times reported.

Sund’s comments came during testimony before the House Oversight Committee during a 90-minute hearing, the outlet added, his first before a House panel since he was forced to resign his post two days after the riot. Also, he was never called at all to testify before Pelosi’s hand-picked Jan. 6 Committee.

“I was floored by him saying that,” Sund testified.