Vow to make all Jan. 6 footage public has become major headache for GOP: report

CBS News reporter Scott MacFarlane noticed that its been a full month since Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) claimed he was releasing the Capitol videos from the Jan. 6 attack.

Earlier this year, before he was fired, Fox host Tucker Carlson selectively edited the Jan. 6 videos to show the empty hallways of the Capitol before and after the attack happened.

"These were not insurrectionists. These were sightseers," he claimed at the time.

While Americans watched the attack unfold live on television, the J6 attackers posted their own videos as they made their way through the hallways searching for former Vice President Mike Pence and then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

Still, there are now Jan. 6 "truthers" attempting to claim it never happened.

Johnson pledged he would post the 44,000 hours of videos from the security cameras to a public website, but MacFarlane reported that less than half a percent have so far been revealed.

"During court proceedings, the Justice Department has already publicly released large caches of videos showing the most violent moments and attacks of Jan. 6, including the beating of police by rioters with makeshift weapons, the mob surrounding lone Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman near the Senate chamber, some vicious and brutal battles in a tunnel, the breaches of windows and doors, the parading of a Confederate flag through the Capitol and injuries suffered by police and members of the crowd," explained MacFarlane.

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For what remains, there are complications. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) explained that while truth and transparency are essential, there are worries, including that security routes for the Capitol Police shared on some videos shouldn't be made public.

But the biggest delay may come from Johnson's pledge to "blur" the faces of any people walking through the Capitol. Johnson said he didn't want to endanger the insurrectionists by exposing their crimes to the authorities.

The issue with that claim, however, is that the FBI already has the videos without the faces blurred. They've been using footage to search for those inside the Capitol to prosecute.

MacFarlane interviewed several people who explained that the task of posting the footage is "daunting" and there's no firm deadline.

"CBS News found the project has been weighed down by a series of unique logistical challenges that will be difficult to untangle. The vast quantity of video — which would require five years of 24-hour-per-day viewing for any single person to watch from beginning to end — and the intricate security configurations of closed-circuit surveillance footage are complicating efforts to upload large chunks of the video," the report explained.

Thus far, two major batches of videos have been posted — they can't yet be viewed, but they've been downloaded. One video is a 90-hour set of hallway overhead shots and an exterior camera that Carlson posted. There's another 24-hour chunk from three "main security cameras."

That's a tiny fraction of the 44,000 hours available.

"The House Administration Committee, which has oversight of the U.S. Capitol Police and the Capitol complex, is tasked with managing and uploading the footage," said MacFarlane. "Months after winning a majority and control of the House, Republicans on the committee opened a Capitol Hill screening room to allow members of the public to view hours of the security video."

Rep. Barry Loudermilk's (R-GA) spokesperson said that they intend to upload a batch each week. If less than half of a percent is uploaded weekly, it means it will take the Republicans over two years to post all of the Jan. 6 videos. Then, it turns out no one will know what time the videos were taken.

"Each video must be converted out of the proprietary CCTV format and into a format that can be uploaded. Unfortunately, when the video is converted, it doesn't retain the time stamp," the spokesman said. "This is an issue we are aware of and plan to embed time stamps in the videos in the future. For now, the title of each video indicates down to the millisecond what time the clips start."

More footage has been posted online at the Justice Department cloud video portal. It's accessible to anyone who enrolls to view it.

Hundreds of hours of that footage have also been posted to a Justice Department cloud video web portal.