It's early in his term, but so far, House Speaker Mike Johnson appears devoted to doing mostly what former Speaker Kevin McCarthy did, only worse. That trend continued on Friday with an apparent sop to the House's extremist right.
"Today, I am keeping my promise to the American people and making all the January 6th tapes available to ALL Americans," Johnson posted on X, formerly Twitter.
The announcement quickly roiled media waters. Just as when McCarthy provided then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson access to Capitol security tapes from the day of the insurrection, Friday’s video dump appears to have been done by House Republicans on their own.
Instead, a mere 90 hours of the 44,000 reported hours of Jan. 6 footage were posted online by House Administration Committee Republicans, and an unnamed "senior aide" told CBS News that the announcement was a surprise to Democrats.
Meanwhile, NBC News reporter Ryan J. Reilly observed that NBC "has had a request pending for two months now for specific videos from the night of Jan. 6 that may help determine who assaulted an officer who was found to have died in the line of duty," so he was "hoping to hear more" on the possible release of that footage.
When Johnson returned to X to clarify about an hour after his original tweet, his statement answered some questions but was vague on others.
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