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.”
Republicans Are
Blurring the Faces ofObstructing Justice So Capitol RioterssoThey Won’t Get ArrestedFTFY
His office later noted that DOJ already has the raw footage.
and later in the article:
Johnson’s spokesman suggested that the speaker was trying to keep the raw footage away from online sleuths who have helped identify hundreds of Capitol rioters and aided in the FBI’s investigation.
i.e. Let’s not let the taxpayers aid law enforcement. Let’s make the government spend taxpayer dollars when the public could help out.
Sounds like we’re going to find Mike Johnson or people close to him financially in the mix.
Well I agree the public could help let’s not forget the Boston Marathon witch hunt. Maybe we don’t let reddit get their hands on that footage.
Eh, witch hunts are a big risk in the immediate aftermath when crowd tension is the highest. It has been three years, at this point I expect the sleuth work on suspect identification would be all upside.
The bigger security concern is sleuths figuring out all the camera locations and, by deduction, the blind spots. Johnson is setting up the next Congress to be much more vulnerable to violent attack.
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Jan 6 committee doesn’t exist anymore
Didn’t Republicans say these rioters were Black Lives Matter people or government actors? Which pile of bullshit does little johnson want us to consume?
All of it.
They’re traitors tho. Why are you defending traitors hmmmmm???
“But they’re PATRIOTS and SO AM I!!” -Johnson, maybe, who hasn’t learned to crack a dictionary
It’s either foolish or malicious to deliberately misrepresent the actions or motivations of these ass-hats just because they’re ass-hats.
The DOJ already has unredacted footage and the blurring of faces is meant to avoid retaliation by “non-governmental actors”, i.e. vigilantes, not to save anyone from arrest.
I disagree. These people broke the law in a serious way. There is no “light treason” when it comes to attempting to obstruct the public vote. We all should know who they are.
There have already been well over 1,000 arrests, a few hundred sentenced, etc. (https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/capitol-breach-cases) and you can look up names/details of those who’ve gone through due process. That’s the system at work, like it or not. I don’t think it’s up to you or me to convict, or harass, or whatever else. You can maybe ID folks whose images are posted by the FBI requesting information from the public. I just hate to see crappy headlines and social media posts distorting what’s happening when it seems pretty simple to verify through non-extreme media outlets.
I say this all with respect.
I hope everyone who gleefully rampaged around the capital gets what is legitimately coming to them.
I understand your point, and appreciate your respect too. If this were petty crime, e.g. shoplifting by some individuals, then I’d agree on keeping the video sealed until due process has, well, processed.
What do we do with several thousand people attacking the core of our democratic process? How do we keep historical accuracy for the future as well, we need to teach people what happened.
I’m conflicted, personally, because I’m glad our representatives see that they’re not untouchable. Maybe it’ll keep them interested in serving those ordinary citizens outside the vaunted halls of the capitol. On the other hand, I strongly disagree with the reasoning behind the traitors’ attempt, and find both the timing and the method suspiciously well planned, by someone who I generally find despicable on multiple levels.
I hope everyone who gleefully rampaged around the capital gets what is legitimately coming to them.
I’ve seen your comments here. I don’t believe you.
I don’t think you have, unless you want to share what you think I’ve said and refresh my memory. The only political topic I’ve engaged on Lemmy had to do with landlords, so I’m not sure where you’re coming from.
Is this the part where we start up the rumours again that Mike Johnson is anti-MAGA by trying to protect the FBI from Trump vigilantes by only blurring out the faces of informants, and just seeing what happens? Chaos for the sake of chaos?
I like this plan. Sign me up.
Or blurring the faces of antifa?
Nothing to hide, nothing to fear, right?
Sometimes hypocrisy is reason enough, but deterrence is good too
“I’ve got nothing to hide.” and other misunderstandings of privacy.
Wrong, I think. The ol’ nothing to hide line is one we can only be comfortable with when it’s not being wielded against us.
“nothing to hide” is a common quip espoused by cops and right wingers. The fact that it doesn’t make any sense is irrelevant to it being a) the view that they hold and b) something that they are hypocritical about
I may be confused about your point. It seems like you’re acknowledging that it’s a bad argument, but supporting using it against those whom you despise, no?
It’s not a good argument (nothing to hide), and I think it gets deployed by whomever is trying to lean on someone else. It’s not great to be a hypocrite, but hypocracy doesn’t invalidate an argument.
This is all aside from what I meant to be my main point though, which is that this original post is, in my view, meant to gin up more outrage by misstating what the speaker said. Turning discourse into an exchange of inflammatory bumper stickers is social media’s most toxic influence.
Talking through “nothing to hide” and its ramifications is worthwhile and on point though. Kudos!
Yeah I see the confusion, that was all just hyperbole meant to poke fun at them for being hypocrits. My main point was the word “deterrence”.
If the faces were shown unblurred, it would be a deterrent to others who might think about engaging in insurrection in the future as they wouldn’t be able to hide behind privacy measures … [And back to the poking fun] the very same measures that they disavow when others are subject to them because “if they have nothing to hide …”
They are related, which is why I said both rather than one or the other
The guy literally said it was to stop the DOJ from charging them. It’s in the quote in the original post.
Why would a self-proclaimed patriot be against charging literal insurrectionists?
Yeah, my fault. I read about this in an Axios article that I linked above. That only makes the rep’s comment more absurd when, again, we know the DOJ has the unedited footage, which is also acknowledged in the Rolling Stone article.
Some of the IDs and arrest happened because people identified the person and reported them. And that’s just from media footages.
Unblur their faces; I just want to talk
I think everyone involved in Jan 6 should be in jail, but after reading your comment I think blurring faces makes sense. Remember when Reddit caught the Boston bomber?
I still use “We did it reddit” at least once a week, in response to someone fucking something up
Yes, although someone else here pointed out to me that the Speaker actually did say he wanted faces blurred to protect those folks from DOJ, which is absurd 1) because I agree that those clowns need to face consequences, and 2) it makes no sense given that DOJ already has the raw footage.
Still, I’d hate to encourage reddit-style vigilantes even if that seems at odds with the fact that the FBI posts images explicitly looking for help in identifying certain suspects.
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.
Which is it? A “peaceful protest by MAGA infiltratded by A Deep State/BLM/Antifa instigating a sedicious Riot” or “Need to blur faces to protect from the non-government retaliation”. If it’s the former, surely the GOP would not desire protection of the latter.
Or should I just now start saying that the GOP led Congress is protecting Antifa/Deep State/BLM traitors? I’mma run with that one…
GOP double think is nothing new. Guns can’t be regulated or considered dangerous, but books must be banned.
Body autonomy. But to avoid vaccines, not so woman can have abortions.
Stop wasting time and energy pointing out conservative hypocrisy.
They know. They don’t care. In fact, I suspect they do it on purpose to anger and frustrate people.
This is a not so rare self own by the right.
Then arrest the entire GOP.
I’m relatively new to this country, has it been always a joke like this? Politics are fucking hilarious here. Wtf is going on?
no definitely not
Well we don’t want the criminals to be charged, and have problems! Jeez!
Politics in the US has been a joke ever since the Eisenhower administration.
Isn’t it obstruction of justice to hide evidence of crimes being committed?
And isn’t this pretty explicitly evidence tampering?
Only if used in court.
Not when a conservative does it.
What a complete fucking buffoon. Where’s the transparency in blurring the guilty parties?
He’s a Christofascist. Every fucking word out of his mouth is self-serving bullshit as a matter of course and should be disregarded as having been said in bad faith.
I don’t know, he straight up said that one of the reasons to blur was to stop the DOJ from charging more people. I think I believe him.
What a patriot.
Johnson says the J6 committee was a partisan action and that the Republicans on the committee were following some other agenda. Therefore, the Republican party is a criminal conspiracy to commit treason against the United States.
So, he’s literally saying that it was a criminal act?
“We want to conceal evidence of a crime”
Horrifying. Anti-American. Should tell you everything you need to know about voting republican, at this time in history
Isn’t this giving succor to an enemy?
Well, no, but it’s giving aid.
Succor, iirc, is food.
Had to check, and according to this (https://www.thefreedictionary.com/succor) it’s not limited to food. Thanks for making me look.
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ok.
Republicans are just telling their base they’re doing this so that the base feels like they’re owning the libs.
The cops have already seen this shit. Where the fuck do they think capital camera footage goes? MTG’s Ring account?
