Mike Johnson's Jan. 6 Tape Admission Raises Questions

House Speaker Mike Johnson's admission on Tuesday that the unreleased January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot video footage will have faces of those involved blurred is raising questions across social media.

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, announced on November 17 that his office would release the complete archive of footage recorded when supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to protest the results of the 2020 election. He promised to release the roughly 44,000 hours in total footage during his run for speaker.

Johnson released an initial 90 hours of footage in November, shared by the Committee on House Administration, but two weeks later no further footage has been released. While the Associated Press said the rest of the footage was expected over the coming months, The Hill reported it was expected that it would be released on November 20.

On Tuesday, while answering a question at a news conference about releasing more internal batches of the footage, Johnson said that he is going through a methodical process of releasing them.

"As you know, we have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don't want them to be retaliated against and be charged by the DOJ," Johnson said.

"That's a slow process to get it done, we're working steadily on it. We've hired additional personnel to do that and all of those tapes ultimately will be out so everybody can see them and draw their own conclusions."

In a statement emailed to Newsweek, Raj Shah, deputy chief of staff for communications for Johnson, clarified and said: "Faces are to be blurred from public viewing room footage to prevent all forms of retaliation against private citizens from any non-governmental actors. The Department of Justice already has access to raw footage from January 6, 2021."

Many took to X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday to share their reaction to the reasoning behind blurring the faces in the footage.

Republicans against Trump wrote: "WOW. Speaker Mike Johnson just said that MAGA Republicans are blurring out the faces of rioters on the Jan. 6 tapes "because we don't want them to be retaliated against and be charged by the DOJ." If this is not obstruction of justice, I don't know what is."

Former Illinois Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger, a member of the Jan. 6 House Committee, wrote: "Thought they were Antifa and FBI and what not."

While attorney Bradley Moss simply wrote on X, "Party of "law and order."

Conservative attorney George Conway, a frequent Trump critic, shared a blurred image of what looks like Trump and wrote: "good idea, Mr. Speaker."

Since the release of the footage, many Republicans, particularly supporters of Trump aligned with the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, have claimed the videos will help confirm their narrative that the events that transpired on January 6 were not a violent storming of the Capitol building in response to Trump's 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

That narrative has been strongly denied by others, including Democrats and moderate Republicans, with available footage and eyewitness testimony rebuking the idea that January 6 was not violent.

As of October, 1,069 defendants in nearly all 50 states and the capital have been charged with a variety of offenses in relation to their presence at the Capitol that day.

Trump was indicted on four counts by the DOJ in August in relation to the riot, including conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Trump has pleaded not guilty.