Marjorie Taylor Greene flip-flops on public release of Jan 6 footage, having proclaimed that selected journalists would get unfettered access
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- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said releasing footage from Jan 6. would be a security issue.
- In an interview, she said she is concerned about left-wing groups "doxing" people.
- Previously, Greene has been adamant about the footage being released to the public.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is sending mixed messages about publicly releasing footage of the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, now saying their release would "put the security of the Capitol at risk" on Friday. Just a few days earlier, she promised "unfettered access" to the footage to three news outlets.
The far-right political figure representing Georgia appeared to reverse her position when she spoke on the right-wing channel Real America's Voice on Saturday, warning of her concerns about releasing the videos.
"And this is our real concern with the videotapes. If we released these videotapes just widely for the public — number one, we put the security of the Capitol at risk because there's over 1,700 video cameras," Greene said.
—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene???????? (@RepMTG) June 3, 2023
She also said she feared releasing the footage would "endanger many Americans that were simply standing on the Capitol grounds, maybe never even walked through the Capitol or committed any crimes," she added.
While some people did "commit violence" and break the law on January 6, she said, she is concerned about those who have been unjustly targeted.
She said she is concerend about left-wing groups using facial recognition technology to "dox these people and hand them over to the FBI and the Department of Justice."
"Sedition Hunters would spend every second of every day analyzing the videos in order to hunt innocent people that just stood on Capitol grounds on J6," Greene later tweeted.
Greene's comments appear to be a complete change from her previous position. Early May, the representative wrote a lengthy tweet on the importance of releasing the footage. Last year, she had a similar message, "The American people deserve to know exactly what happened on January 6th, 2021," Greene said.
On Wednesday, Greene said in her post that three outlets would receive "unfettered access to the J6 tapes." She said the reporting would start Thursday, per The Hill, but that deadline was missed.
The tapes were given to Just the News founder John Solomon and Julie Kelly, a senior writer at American Greatness – both Trump-aligned journalists – by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. She did not identify what the third outlet would be.