The US The nearly three years since the Jan. 6 riots in the Capitol have led to extensive accountability efforts: months of special congressional hearings, countless reports and books written about the riots, and more than 1,000 arrests.
But the slow process now underway could be a game-changer for the long-term outlook for the insurgency and its investigation: nearly 40,000 hours of footage from video cameras throughout the Capitol — much of which has never been seen outside of law enforcement settings. – There is a promise to reveal it eventually.
Experts said the footage would help shape the political narrative moving forward on the insurgency, as well as provide vital fuel for a group of volunteer spies.
Those activists — collectively known as “sedition hunters” — have identified large numbers of riot participants using images only from social media and news reports. The groups have also been named in federal indictments. The release of new footage offers the possibility of identifying numerous new participants in the riots, whom activists will eventually refer to the FBI for arrest.
“I’m sure it will benefit sedition hunters, if not with new IDs, to have already known criminals in specific places at specific times,” said Forrest Rogers, one of the volunteer investigators.
January 6 footage released from inside the Capitol
In a surprise announcement last week, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said his party would make the footage available to the public through a page on the House Administration Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee website.
Johnson said the release “will give millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations and the media the ability to see what happened that day.”
The footage, which will be posted in waves over several months, will comprise about 5% of the total video, which will not be released because it “may contain sensitive security information related to building architecture,” Johnson said.
In contrast, much of the footage was given by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to then-TV host Tucker Carlson. Carlson aired an edited version of the video to claim that the uprising was peaceful; That report led to a new explosion of extremism and threats on social media.
A small series of videos released since Friday has sparked a resurgence of Jan. 6 conspiracy theories online, but some experts believe the full release will help convince the public of the seriousness of what happened at the Capitol.
“Conspiracy theorists have already taken bits and pieces of this footage and repackaged it dishonestly,” said Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, who studies extremist groups. “If all the footage is available, in theory, it should be very easy to take 10 seconds of footage and say ‘here’s the whole file, you can watch it yourself’.”
But Michael Addison-Hayden, an expert on far-right extremism and author of a forthcoming book on white nationalism, worries that the new footage will be circulated by conservative politicians to reinforce an already popular narrative that the Jan. 6 massacre was exaggerated by the media. . has been done
“If you have a 30-second clip of people walking down the aisle as they walk, people who want to believe that January 6 was less violent, including Trump supporters, will see that image as a representation of what happened,” Hayden said. “They will ignore the violence against police officers, and they will also ignore the central attack on our government — on our democracy.”
Whatever impact the newly released footage may have on the January 6 story, there is one group that will heartily welcome the chance to watch thousands of new hours of video: treason hunters.
A boon for traitors
As USA Today reported earlier this year, dozens of amateur detectives used publicly available footage and photos since Jan. 6 to identify more than 100 people whose photos appeared on the FBI “wanted” list, but whose names had never been publicly named. – or were charged. His actions on rebellion.
Several treason hunters contacted by USA TODAY said they were cautiously positive about the release of the new footage, calling it a game-changer and hoping it would fill gaps in their knowledge.
Some separatists told USA Today that the Jan. 6 video footage is invaluable in trying to identify the rioters. Some amateur detectives use facial recognition software to initially identify suspects, whom they then painstakingly identify and track throughout the riot. Throughout the process, the rioters are given a hashtag to identify the researchers.
For example, sedition victims identified a suspect named #PippiLongScarf who spent nearly an hour on Jan. 6 at the edge of a tunnel entrance leading to the Capitol, throwing objects at police officers. .
Another rioter, who accidentally sprayed pepper spray on #PippiLongScarf, was nicknamed #PippiSprayer.
The process involved collecting and organizing footage and photos from thousands of social media accounts capturing the riots. News footage from the day is also archived and searched, as well as video footage that has been gradually released during the more than 1,000 trials since the coup.
But investigators also cast doubt on the promise to release thousands of hours of new footage. So far only 90 hours of video has been released.
“At the rate they’re going, it’s likely to take a long time,” Rogers said. However, after releasing the first batch, they probably already realized that the public was not giving them the response they expected which would be in line with how they wanted to push the January 6 story.”
US Capitol Police did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.
Footage featuring Tucker Carlson was previously released
While the internal January footage has not been made public, it was made available to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and several other news sources and individuals earlier this year.
Carlson and his staff then edited selected excerpts of the footage, which they aired in segments depicting the violent uprising as a largely peaceful protest that had been misrepresented by media coverage.
Carlson’s stance on the riots was criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress, as well as the numerous deaths and injuries resulting from the riots, as well as the thousands of hours of footage already released that day by the Capitol Police. Carlson is no longer a cable TV talk host.
