Trump praises Johnson for ‘having the courage’ to make January 6 recordings public

Former President Trump congratulated Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Friday, after Republicans began releasing footage of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol.

The recordings, shared by the House Administration Committee, show the Capitol grounds during the insurrection. So far, about 90 hours of the 44,000 hours of footage have been made public, but the full collection is expected to be made public by Monday.

“Congratulations to House Speaker Mike Johnson for having the guts and courage to release all of the J6 tapes, which will explicitly reveal what really happened on January 6!” Trump wrote in a Friday Truth Social article.

The House committee that released the recordings initially announced plans to do so in September.

“This decision will give millions of Americans, defendants, public interest organizations and the media the opportunity to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely “up to the interpretation of a small group of government officials,” Johnson said in a statement. his announcement.

The faces of private citizens have been blurred and about 5 percent of the images will be redacted for building security reasons, the president added.

The recordings come nearly three years after the riot. Several Republican lawmakers have pushed for the footage to be made public in the years since, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — a staunch ally of the former president.

“We need to release the J6 tapes to a public online source so everyone knows what happened and what didn’t happen, we need to restore fair justice and America can move forward before,” Greene said earlier this year.

The news also comes after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) made headlines in February when he granted access to some of the tapes to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson after sparking speculation about how and when he would release the footage.