House Republicans announced on Friday that members of the media and other qualified individuals will have access to view security footage from the U.S. Capitol breach on January 6, 2021.
“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,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) reportedly said in a statement.
GOP lawmakers first announced earlier this year they would begin to slowly roll out to individual news agencies more than 40,000 hours of security footage from the Capitol breach to networks to counter the “politicization” fostered by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the January 6th Committee.
The Committee on House Administration published a set of guidelines that would allow members of the U.S. media, government-focused nonprofit organizations, and attorneys for defendants facing charges related to the January 6 to submit requests to view the footage.
“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,” Loudermilk, who chairs the administration committee’s oversight subpanel, added.
According to program rules, those seeking access to the security tapes would need to set an appointment that limits them to watch the footage for three hours at a time, once a week. Spectators are prohibited from recording the tapes from secured terminals inside the Capitol building and may only be given portions of the footage at the committee’s discretion.
For more than two years, U.S. citizens have called on lawmakers to release the footage to the public, expressing concerns over how media outlets curate the timeline of events.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) announced in May that three news media outlets received footage from the Capitol breach to bring the American people more transparency about what happened that day.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) released “unfettered access” of the Capitol security footage to investigative journalist and Just the News founder John Solomon, senior writer for American Greatness Julie Kelly, and an unidentified third news outlet.
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