BY EMILY BROOKS AND MIKE LILLIS
House Republicans are bringing fresh attention to the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob in ways that are earning praise from former President Trump and the party base.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) this month announced he was posting online video clips from around the Capitol complex on Jan. 6, 2021, gathered from a tranche of tens of thousands of hours of security footage — making good on a pledge during the Speaker’s race to release the tapes to the public and building on previous GOP efforts.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of Trump’s top supporters in Congress, is calling for a new select committee aimed at investigating the members of the bipartisan panel that conducted an extensive probe into the attack in the last Congress — and reached damning conclusions about Trump’s role in orchestrating the violence.
The renewed focus is opening up questions about how much further the House GOP will go down Jan. 6 rabbit holes amid pressure from Greene and other backers of Trump, the odds-on favorite to be the party’s 2024 standard-bearer.
A number of House conservatives, including Greene, have continued to defend those prosecuted after they entered the Capitol illegally on Jan. 6, characterizing them as “political prisoners” who’ve been targeted unfairly by partisan prosecutors.
Still other GOP lawmakers continue to broadcast unfounded accusations that the violence of Jan. 6 was fomented, not by Trump supporters, but by undercover federal agents — members of the so-called deep state who sought to use an attack on the Capitol as a pretense for prosecuting the former president after he left office.
The Republicans’ decision to revisit Jan. 6 on so many fronts has highlighted the sheer grip Trump maintains over the party, even as he’s been out of office for almost three years and faces numerous indictments for his actions surrounding the attack.
Trump has been defiant in defending both his actions related to the Jan. 6 riot and those of the protestors who stormed into the Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to block Congress from certifying his 2020 defeat
“It was a beautiful day,” Trump said during a CNN town hall earlier this year.
Yet Johnson and other GOP leaders are also taking a political risk by shining a bright light on the Capitol attack, which injured scores of law enforcement officers, led to more than 1,000 protestor arrests and called sharp attention to Trump’s unique disdain for democratic norms. The attack has challenged long-held Republican claims to be the party that champions law enforcement and election integrity.
And with control of the House up for grabs next November, vulnerable Republicans in battleground districts aren’t eager to revisit the events of that day — a dynamic that Democratic campaign operatives are already hoping to exploit.
“In their quest to appease Donald Trump and MAGA extremists, House Republicans are abandoning the middle class,” Viet Shelton, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Tuesday. “Voters can see the split screen narrative of House Democrats focusing on kitchen table issues like lowering costs while Republicans remain obsessed with spreading debunked conspiracy theories and reminding the public of their role in undermining our democracy — and they will reject this extremism every time.”
Yet Republicans are not backing away from probing Jan. 6 issues.
Greater GOP scrutiny of Jan. 6 — and the select committee investigation into the day in the previous Democratic-controlled Congress — started under ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). The House Administration Oversight Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), has led those efforts, focusing largely on security failures around the Capitol that contributed to the breach. It is also reviewing the work of the Jan. 6 select committee, which Republicans have long argued did not focus enough on security failures.
Republicans, since taking over the House at the start of the year, have faced repeated calls to publicize as much footage from Jan. 6 as possible. McCarthy had first granted former Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive first access to the footage in March. Wider access was then provided to media organizations, nonprofits and Jan. 6 defendants starting in September.
The original plan for the committee was to publicly release security footage clips that were specifically requested by media outlets. But as Republicans seeking to replace McCarthy after his ouster campaigned for the spot, they pledged to colleagues to release the tapes from Jan. 6 to the public.
Now, under Johnson, the House Administration Committee is proactively reviewing all footage and posting as much online as possible, as well as allowing members of the public to request time at the in-person terminals — amounting to a massive expansion of access.
“Today, I am keeping my promise to the American people and making all the January 6th tapes available to ALL Americans,” Johnson said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, earlier this month.
The move earned cheers from Trump, who hailed Johnson “for having the Courage and Fortitude to release all of the J6 Tapes.”
Release of the footage also earned Johnson high praise from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) — who had long pushed for public release of the footage and led the effort to oust McCarthy.
“You won’t always agree with @SpeakerJohnson – but know this: HE WON’T LIE,” Gaetz wrote on X. “If he says he is going to do something, he is going to do it. Thank you for keeping your word on the J6 tapes, Mr. Speaker.”
Some of the released footage was quickly misrepresented by right-wing activists online, particularly by those pushing the “fedsurrection” conspiracy theory that undercover federal agents had largely pushed the Capitol breach and riot.
One clip that circulated questioned whether a rioter was flashing a federal badge. That gained the attention of Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — who said that he planned to ask FBI Director Christopher Wray about it at the next oversight hearing.
But that clip actually showed a man holding up a vape device; he was sentenced to 51 months in prison, according to NBC News.
And earlier this month, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) confronted Wray about “ghost buses” he claimed were “filled with FBI informants dressed as Trump supporters deployed onto our Capitol on Jan. 6.”
“Your day is coming, Mr. Wray,” Higgins warned the Trump-appointed official.
Republicans on the whole, though, are not worried about how those online may improperly present the footage.
“We are confident that the American people can view these videos and make determinations for themselves. Our goal is transparency,” said a senior GOP congressional aide. “As is common with everything on the internet, sometimes the initial conclusion isn’t always correct. But we’re confident that the American people, just like any other situation, are best suited to draw their own conclusions, given all of the information.”
Questions remain about how much further Republicans, under the new Speaker, will go in their efforts to relitigate Jan. 6 and present a narrative favorable to Trump in 2024 — even entertaining debunked conspiracy theories to do so.
Greene’s call for a new select committee to investigate Jan. 6 indicates that she does not think the House GOP probes are going far enough.
And she has already signaled a ready willingness to buck her own leadership and force action on measures they oppose, including votes to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
But with the release of the footage, Johnson has shown a strong willingness to fulfill the wishes of the right flank when he can.
“This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials,” Johnson said in a statement alongside the release of the footage.
