House Republicans have initiated a series of new investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot in response to the previously unseen video security footage from inside the Capitol that day, footage that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made public.
House Republicans are interested in reviewing the security failures from that day, how the Democratic-led select committee conducted itself in the last Congress and the treatment of Jan. 6 defendants.
“We’re going to have hearings. We don’t have any plans to subpoena anyone at the moment, but if we have to we will,” said Rep. Barry Loudermilk, Georgia Republican and chairman of the subcommittee on oversight of the House Administration panel, when asked if he intends to subpoena any of the Jan. 6 committee members.
Mr. Loudermilk is beefing up his committee for the task. He and his staff are looking through hours of security footage from that day when pro-Trump citizens committed violent acts against law enforcement and defaced the Capitol to protest the 2020 presidential certification.
New footage of that day broadcast by Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson this week showed other camera angles that the Jan. 6 select committee never released. The new film showed many people entering the Capitol through open doors and behaving peacefully.
“We saw a lot of violent videos. I mean, there were bad things going on by bad people. I’ve seen some things that I just can’t believe ever happened, and Americans have seen a lot of them,” Mr. Loudermilk said. “They didn’t see the other side. To me, I think the truth is going to be somewhere between what [the Jan. 6 committee] reported and what you saw [in the] Tucker Carlson report.”
In the newly released footage, Jacob Chansley, the QAnon Shaman and Jan. 6 defendant who wore face paint and a fur-horned helmet, was peacefully led around the Senate side into the upper chamber by nine Capitol Police officers. Yet he was sentenced to almost four years in prison last November. According to his attorney, Albert Watkins, the government never disclosed the video to him.
“We begged and pleaded to get this man out of solitary confinement. … Through each of those three hearings, the government assistant U.S. attorney knew the most important aspect of that hearing was that Jake was not violent,” Mr. Watkins told Mr. Carlson Wednesday night. “They knew that Jake had walked around with all of these police officers. They had that video footage I didn’t get. It wasn’t disclosed to me. It wasn’t provided to me. I requested it. I filed the requisite pleading for it.”
Attorneys for Jan. 6 defendants now have access to all the footage by going through Mr. McCarthy’s office.
“So if any of them need anything for their defendants, for their trials, for anything, any preparation, they are able to call the speaker’s office and get whatever they need,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, told reporters.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said his members were also concerned about the actions of the Jan. 6 committee and Ms. Greene is taking the lead on the treatment of Jan. 6 defendants who are still in jail. This includes leading a group of GOP lawmakers to the District of Columbia jails and sending a letter announcing the trip this week.
“I’ve been more focused on like the human rights abuses at the jail, and basically the difference in how the Justice Department has treated them versus like ANTIFA and BLM,” Ms. Greene said.
She noted that many Jan. 6 defendants who could not afford lawyers and had public defenders were also not treated well by their counsel, who may not have sought Capitol video footage to help exonerate their clients.
“I will tell you, like a lot of these people have public defenders, and the public defenders have been awful to [Jan. 6 defendants] That’s what’s been reported. So that maybe they just haven’t asked for it,” she said. “Maybe the defendant did. Maybe that public defender didn’t actively go through the process.”
