Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told Newsmax on Monday that 13,000 hours of the Jan. 6 tapes have been released so far, adding that new staff was hired solely to support the "24-hour operation."
Johnson told "Eric Bolling The Balance" that the tapes amount to about five years' worth of video.
"We're releasing them in large batches, I think 13,000 of the 40,000 hours have been released so far," Johnson told Bolling. "And the only reason they're not all out there — I wish I could wave a wand and do it all today — is that it takes a while to upload and process them. If you do the math, it's five years' worth of videotape."
Johnson announced in November that all 44,000 hours of video from the Capitol Hill riots on Jan. 6, 2021, would be released. That came after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., opted against releasing them publicly, keeping a small circle of those who could view the tapes.
"So, I made a commitment immediately after I got the gavel that we would start releasing that. Originally, we were trying to blur some of the faces to protect the innocent, you know, people who were just there and just happened to be walking through the building," Johnson said. "But then we realized a lot of this is out there in the public anyway.
"And so, yeah, we're releasing them, Eric, as fast as we possibly can. We had to hire new staff to do it. They're uploading it. It's a 24-hour operation, and all that tape will be out there as soon as possible."
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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