House Speaker Mike Johnson has promised to release more than 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from Jan. 6 to the public, with one major caveat: The faces of some individuals who participated in the storming of the Capitol, a violent attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election, will be blurred out.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson said that “the release of the January 6 tapes is a critical and important exercise, we want transparency … we trust — House Republicans trust — the American people to draw their own conclusions.”
Johnson added that the party is going “through a methodical process of releasing them as quickly as we can” and that they “have to blur some of the faces of the 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, you know, concerns and problems.”
I think he means so that anyone in John Q Public can’t recognize any neighbors or coworkers in the vids and report them to DOJ. So, still obstruction.
Well, no, I don’t think that’s obstruction. He’s not hiding them from DOJ, since they already have the footage. Choosing to not publicize faces for John Q Public won’t get in the way of their prosecutions.
FBI has their list of most wanted including pictures.
So this is perhaps not helpful at worst, and avoiding vigilante justice at best, is what I’m thinking.