House Republicans to allow media, defendants access to Jan. 6 footage

The media, certain nonprofits and criminal defendants will have access to Congress’s trove of security camera footage collected during the Jan. 6 riots, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) announced Friday.

“House Republicans are continuing to deliver on our promise to bring transparency and accountability to the People’s House by increasing access to security footage of the U.S. Capitol from January 5th and 6th, 2021,” Loudermilk said in a statement.

Starting this month, the Committee on House Administration will allow qualified individuals to watch Jan. 6 footage from secured terminals inside the Capitol Building. It won’t be possible to record footage, Loudermilk said.

Appointments are needed and are limited to three hours at a time, once a week, according to program rules.

Media will be allowed to request clips of footage for use, limited to 10 per week and 20 per month, with a maximum length of 10 minutes of footage. Clips will be released to the media at the discretion of Committee staff depending on the security of their contents, the rules state.

The move follows through on a commitment from Loudermilk in February to make footage accessible.

It also opens the footage to all media for the first time, six months after Tucker Carlson, then of Fox News, was granted “unfettered access” to about 44,000 hours of video in a controversial move by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

Carlson ended up playing portions of the footage on his show in March, using clips to downplay the violence of the riots.