New January 6 Videos Praised by Republicans: 'Narrative Has Crumbled'

Prominent conservatives have shared footage from the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill riot, released by new House Speaker Mike Johnson, which one said means the "J6 Committee's violent insurrection narrative has crumbled."

On Friday, Johnson made around 90 hours of January 6 footage security footage available via a committee website. There, he said the remaining 44,000 hours of video, taken from surveillance and police body cameras, would be posted over the coming months, fulfilling a vow he made while running for speaker.

Hundreds of Donald Trump supporters stormed Congress on January 6, 2021 in a bid to stop the 2020 presidential election result being certified. The then-president baselessly said that it had been stolen from him via fraud. In the ensuing violence, 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed Trump supporter, was shot dead by law enforcement, and over 100 Capitol Police officers were injured. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

A number of short clips from the footage were shared on X, formerly Twitter, where some have received hundreds of thousands of views. Charlie Kirk, head of pro-Trump campaign group Turning Point USA, shared a 37-second clip showing police officers at one end of a congressional corridor and demonstrators at the other, without any apparent conflict between the two. Kirk wrote: "And just like that the J6 Committee's violent insurrection narrative has crumbled.

"The Capitol Police facilitated the protesters passage through the building. The vast majority of J6ers should be immediately released," Kirk added.

Republican House Representative Troy Nehls posted a video, just over a minute in length. It shows demonstrators making their way across a corridor in the Congressional complex while a number of police officers stand to one side.

Nehls added: "This is what they've been hiding from you, the American people. Do you need any more proof that January 6 was NOT an insurrection?"

A third slip was shared by Citizen Free Press, a news aggregation website. It appears to show an arrested man in a corridor being uncuffed by a police officer before fist-bumping him.

Newsweek has reached out to the United States Capitol Police, responsible for law enforcement in Congress, for comment by email.

However, the Republican Accountability project, which describes itself as a group of pro-democracy conservatives, said the footage was being used selectively. It shared a montage of Trump supporters attacking police officers, mixed with the then-president's speech.

The project wrote on X: "Mike Johnson, like Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson before him, is trying to use selective video to whitewash January 6. But we remember what happened: Donald Trump sent a violent mob to the Capitol in an attempt to undermine our democracy."

Publicly available footage from the Capitol Hill riot shows prolonged confrontation between police and rioters, during which officers were repeatedly punched, hit with flag poles and targeted with chemical irritants.

An investigation into the January 6 disorder by a House Select Committee, which published an 845-page report in December 2022, held Trump personally responsible for the disorder and recommended he face criminal charges. Its summary said: "The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him."

Trump is facing charges related to claims that he broke the law attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, both across the United States and in the state of Georgia specifically. The former president has pled not guilty to all counts and has repeatedly said that the cases against him are politically motivated because he remains the frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.