The GOP-controlled Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight has launched a Rumble channel and released the second batch of security footage from the January 6th events at the U.S. Capitol. The first few videos were uploaded to the Rumble channel on December 5th. By the following day, the collection had grown to 135 clips, each lasting about 10 minutes, and the channel had attracted nearly 700 followers by December 7th.
On November 17th, the committee released the first batch of 90 CCTV clips on its House of Representatives website. The two websites now contain nearly 40 hours of the more than 40,000 hours of video from January 6th held by Capitol Police.
U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight, stated, “As promised, we’re releasing more U.S. Capitol Police CCTV video footage from January 6th to ensure full transparency and accountability. Every American may access this and future footage on our new Rumble video page.”
The new batch of videos all come from Camera 0908, housed high on the west dome of the Capitol. The aerial footage starts just after midnight and ends about 11:55 p.m. on January 6th. The video includes the flow of protesters from the Ellipse during and after former President Donald Trump’s speech, the breach of the first police line, and the violence on several levels of the west front of the Capitol.
Capitol Police have a network of more than 1,700 security cameras inside the Capitol Building and across Capitol grounds. The agency has consistently opposed public release of the CCTV footage.
When he announced the release of up to 44,000 hours of January 6th video, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pledged to regularly update the website with thousands of hours of footage.
Enthusiasm about the video rollout was tempered by the announcement that the subcommittee would blur any identifiable faces.
The decision to blur faces drew fire from both sides of the political spectrum. Former Rep. Lynn Cheney (R-Wyo.) criticized the idea of blurring the video, while defendants in January 6th criminal cases also criticized both the rollout of video and the blurring of faces.
Conservative social media influencer “Catturd” and defendant Will Pope, who writes as Free State Will on X, also disagreed with the decision, as did many others.
A senior congressional aide defended the blurring, stating that it is necessary to protect innocent individuals from groups that seek to ruin the lives of anyone who was at the Capitol on January 6th, regardless of whether they have been charged with a crime or not.
The Times-Picayune newspaper of New Orleans published an editorial cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning Walt Handelsman mocking its home-state representative, Mr. Johnson, for the decision to blur faces in the released footage.
