Capitol's Jan. 6 surveillance video will finally be released. Here's what could happen next

The nearly three years since the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol have brought a wide range of attempts at accountability: months of special congressional hearings, countless reports and books written about the riot, and more than 1,000 arrests. 

But a slow-motion process now underway may become a game-changer for the longer-term view of the insurrection and its investigation: some 40,000 hours of footage from video cameras across the Capitol – most of which has never been viewed outside of law enforcement settings – is finally promised to be made public. 

The footage will likely help shape the political narrative over the insurrection moving forward, experts said. It will also provide vital fuel for a group of volunteer sleuths.

Those activists – known collectively as “Sedition Hunters” – have identified large numbers of riot participants using images from social media and news reports alone. The groups have even been credited in federal indictments. The release of new footage brings the possibility of identifying an untold number of new participants in the riot, whom the activists would flag to the FBI for eventual arrest.  

“I am sure it will benefit the Sedition Hunters, if not with new IDs, then with placing already known criminals at certain places at certain times,” said Forrest Rogers, one of the volunteer investigators.

Jan. 6 footage from inside the Capitol released

In the surprise announcement last week, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said his party will make the footage available to the public via a page on the website of the House Administration Committee's oversight subcommittee. 

Johnson said the release will “provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day.”

The footage, which will be posted in waves over several months, will not include about 5% of the total video, which will not be released because it "may involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture," Johnson said.

By contrast, most of the footage had been provided to then-TV host Tucker Carlson by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Carlson broadcast an edited version of the video to claim the insurrection had been peaceful; that report led to a new blowup of extremism and threats on social media. 

The small tranche of videos that has been released since Friday has already led to Jan. 6 conspiracy theories resurfacing online, but some experts are confident the full release will help convince the public of the seriousness of what happened at the Capitol.   

“Conspiracy theorists have already taken little snippets of this footage and repackaged it in dishonest ways,” said Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who studies extremist groups. “If all of the footage is available, then, in theory, it should be easy enough to take those 10 seconds of footage and say: ‘Here’s the full file. You can go look at it yourself.’”

But Michael Edison-Hayden, an expert on far-right extremism and author of an upcoming book on white nationalism, worried the new footage will be spun by conservative politicians to strengthen the already popular narrative that Jan. 6 has been overblown by the media.

“If you have a 30-second clip of people walking down the hallway, as if they are sightseeing, people who want to believe that January 6 was less violent, including Trump supporters, will choose to use that image as the representation of what happened,” Hayden said. “They will ignore the violence of violence against police officers, and also the central attack on our government − on our democracy.”

Whatever the impact of the newly released footage on the narrative over Jan. 6, there is one group that wholeheartedly welcomes the chance to pore over thousands of new hours of video: the sedition hunters.

A boon to the sedition hunters

As USA TODAY reported earlier this year, dozens of amateur sleuths used publicly available footage and photos from Jan. 6 to identify more than 100 people whose photos appeared on an FBI “Wanted” list but who had never been publicly named – or charged – for their actions.  

Several sedition hunters contacted by USA TODAY said they were cautiously positive about the release of the new footage, calling it a game-changer that they hope will fill in gaps in their knowledge.

Video footage from Jan. 6 has been invaluable to the effort to identify rioters, several sedition hunters told USA TODAY. Some amateur sleuths use facial recognition software to initially identify suspects, whom they then painstakingly identify and track throughout the riot. Throughout the process, rioters are assigned hashtags to identify them to researchers.

For example, the sedition hunters identified a suspect they labeled #PippiLongScarf, who spent close to an hour on Jan. 6 on a ledge by the entrance to one of the tunnels leading to the Capitol, threw objects at police officers and tried to pepper-spray officers.

Another rioter, who accidentally pepper-sprayed #PippiLongScarf, was given the moniker #PippiSprayer.

The process involves collecting and organizing footage and photographs from thousands of social media accounts that captured the riot. News footage from the day is also archived and searched through, as is video footage that has gradually been released in the course of the more than 1,000 prosecutions that have come out of the insurrection. 

But the investigators also voiced skepticism about the promise to release the thousands of hours of new footage. So far, only 90 hours of video has been released.

"At the pace they are proceeding, it will most likely take quite some time,” Rogers said. “However, after releasing the first batch, they have probably already realized the public is not giving them the expected response which would be in line with the Jan. 6 narrative they wanted to advance."

The U.S. Capitol Police did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment.

Footage previously released to Tucker Carlson

While the internal Jan. footage has not been made public, it was made available to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and some other news sources and individuals earlier this year.

Carlson and his staff then selectively edited snippets of the footage, which they aired in segments portraying the insurrection as a mostly peaceful protest that was misrepresented by media coverage.

Carlson’s take on the riot was widely criticized by Democrats and Republicans in Congress alike, as well as the Capitol Police, who pointed at the deaths and injuries resulting from the riot, as well as the thousands of hours of already released footage from the day. Carlson is no longer a cable TV talk host. 

The sedition hunters contacted by USA TODAY expressed hope the release of the footage will dispel myths about the insurrection.

“Facts are facts,” Rogers said.