Speaker Johnson Explains Holdup In Releasing Jan 6 Tapes: ‘We Have To Blur Some Of The Faces’ To Protect Them From The DOJ

House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed he will release the rest of the Jan. 6 footage in the interest of “transparency,” as soon as staffers finish blurring the faces of the participants.

“We’re going through a methodical process of releasing them as quickly as we can,” Johnson said Tuesday. He continued:

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 to be charged by the DOJ, and to have other concerns and problems. So, that’s a slow process to get it done; we’re working steadily on it. We’ve hired additional personnel to do that But all of those tapes ultimately will be out so everybody can see them and draw their own conclusions.

So far, Johnson has released about 90 hours of footage, leaving an additional 44,000 hours to go. Johnson claimed the remaining footage would be released over the next several months.

Far-right Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and former President Donald Trump have praised Johnson’s promise to release the footage, saying it will “prove” that the activities of Jan. 6, 2021, were peaceful.

Johnson said his decision to release the footage, “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.”

He repeated that claim Tuesday, saying,  it’s important to “trust the American people to reach their own conclusions” after viewing the tapes. “They should not be dictated by some narrative and then accepted as fact.”

More than 1,000 people have been charged with taking part in the insurrection, some 335 have been sentenced to serve time, and at least seven people have died due to events surrounding that day.

Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.