Newly Released Surveillance Footage Challenges Official Jan. 6 Narrative
As more videos are made public, the list of troubling questions continues to grow.
News Analysis
A new national debate has begun over how much information is still unknown about the Capitol invasion.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson had exclusive access granted by Kevin McCarthy, the Republican from California (House Speaker), to U.S. Capitol security video and other footage. Most of this material was hidden from the public.
Carlson’s first broadcast special If the March 6 footage is anything to go by, it is clear that the Jan. 6 narrative, as it stands, is dead. legacy of troubling questions The situation continues to improve.
The public is limited to viewing the video from security cameras and police bodiescams for nearly 4.7 years. This includes footage taken by thousands of Jan.6 protesters.
However, much of the video has been kept secret by a protective order issued by the court. As the custodian of Capitol Police Security Video, it is not clear if Congress provided the entire Jan. 6 video collection to the Department of Justice. Over 14,000 hours have been used by the prosecutor in prosecution of Jan.6 crimes.
Well before Carlson envisioned his highly watched March 6–7 specials, defense attorneys on Jan. 6 criminal cases complained that video and other evidence beneficial to their clients have not been disclosed by the government as required under Supreme Court rulings.
Carlson’s revelations concerning the “QAnon Shaman,” Jacob Chansley, Ray Epps mysterious Jan. 6 figure, defense attorneys will continue to cry out for exculpatory evidence over the next weeks and months.
The truth should not be difficult to find, as Jan. 6, was undoubtedly the most documented and recorded event in recorded history.
But the massive digital evidence cache has been tightly controlled—and even manipulated—to great effect on public opinion. Unfettered public access to all of the video—if it is granted—will crack the legacy media narrative even more and widen the political divide in America.
Below is a summary of all the issues the 41,000 hours video footage will likely affect.
Incompetent Leadership in Evacuation
This is perhaps the best example of how security cameras can help to identify critical stories.
Carlson will present the second Capitol Videos special, on March 7. He will relate the story of U.S. Capitol Police Lieutenant Tarik Johnson. Tarik said that Yogananda Pittman left him without direction Jan. 6.
Johnson asked for permission from the Senate to be evacuated, but Johnson received no reply. Johnson called for directions from the Command Center, but was ignored by the USCP dispatcher.
Johnson continued to push ahead and was able to lead the evacuation. On the radio, Johnson said that he’d take all discipline necessary to perform on his own.
This segment “Tucker Carlson Tonight” The Epoch Times will provide investigative reporting. told Johnson’s story January
“There was no response from anybody at the Command Center,” Johnson stated this to The Epoch Times. “I say even before I initiated evacuation, I say specifically, ‘We’ve got to start thinking about getting the people out before we don’t have a chance to.’
“I heard no response. I then asked permission to evacuate. I heard no response.”
Johnson said the Command Center’s silence caused the loss of precious time that might have prevented the shooting death of protester Ashli Babbitt at about 2:45 p.m. on Jan. 6.
Johnson became known to much of America as the Capitol Police lieutenant who wore a bright red Make America Great Again ball cap while he worked with a pair of Oath Keepers to rescue 16 USCP officers trapped in the foyer inside the massive Columbus Doors.
Johnson was suspended by USCP and later accused of rules violations, including conduct unbecoming, for wearing the Trump hat and working with the Oath Keepers on the officer rescue. He said he believes those charges were actually brought because the evacuations and other split-second leadership decisions he made embarrassed Pittman.
Police Actions Raise Questions
Carlson aired Capitol security video showing Capitol Police leading the QAnon Shaman around the building and letting him into the U.S. Senate, where he posed on the rostrum and made a speech.
Many other aspects of police presence and behavior on Jan. 6 have already drawn scrutiny and critique.
Probably the most graphic example is that of Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Thau, who was like a one-man Army on the west front of the Capitol during the mid-afternoon of Jan. 6.
Bodycam footage from several Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers shows Thau dropped at least four protesters with a taser, tossed uncounted explosive munitions into the tightly packed crowd, directed high-velocity pepper spray into a stiff headwind, and fired a 40mm shell from a munition launcher into the crowd.
His own bodycam shows him rushing up to another officer under the inauguration scaffolding and shouting, “We require more [expletive] munitions!”
After being possibly the most active officer in applying “Compliance with pain” to the crowds, Thau concluded that the strategy did not work. He told another officer the effort was like “shooting zombies” and declared, “They are multiplied by being shot.”
Police use of force became a hotly debated topic, at least in the public square. Metropolitan Police declared all of its uses of force on Jan. 6 to be justified.
Use-of-force expert Stan Kephart, commenting in the July 2022 Epoch Times documentary, “The Real Story of Jan. 6,” begged to differ. Kephart said crowd-control grenades, rubber bullets, crowd-dispersal shells, and chemicals were misused by police on Jan. 6.
A gas grenade launched by MPD Officer Rich Khoury at the urging of Thau misfired, landing amid a crowd of supervisors and officers. The resulting gas cloud sent police scurrying and weakened the nearby police line.
At nearly the same time, Officer Anthony Alioto tossed a CS gas canister into the crowd from above. A protester threw it back just in time for it to dislodge its payload of chemical irritant. That drove officers into the Capitol and led to the crowd surging up the stairs to the Lower West Terrace.
One man who knows it all too well is Mark Griffin of Canadensis, Pennsylvania, who was shot with a 37mm munition shell at nearly point-blank range on the afternoon of Jan. 6.
Griffin was standing at the police barricades on the west front, explaining to a young MPD officer why he and so many others came to Washington. Then he was blown to the ground by a shell that impacted above his left knee, splitting his femur and necessitating surgeries that he said cost $250,000.
“Some people helped me get up after I fell.” Griffin told The Epoch Times. “I had no idea how bad I got hurt.”
Crowd-control shells are typically not for close-quarters use and should never be fired directly at a person, Kephart said. Firing the weapons close to people can lead to serious injury or death, according to manufacturers’ warnings.
Griffin said he hopes the release of CCTV security video from the Capitol exterior will pinpoint which police officer fired the shot that shattered his leg.
Derrick Vargo had climbed up the stone railing with balusters in an effort to hang his Donald Trump flag from the side of the Capitol staircase on Jan. 6. He ducked the baton swings from one police officer, but when he stood up, a U.S. Capitol Police motorcycle officer’s push sent him flailing to the ground below.
“He remembers exactly where he was in that Capitol Building. It’s true, he does work there.” Vargo told The Epoch Times. “He’s more than just a citizen. He is there. He can see how high he’s up. I was not shoved by him with one arm, but two. He wanted me to leave it. That was very deliberate.”
Vargo suffered a fractured ankle and extensive mid-foot injuries that required multiple surgeries to repair. Surgeons used a screw to hold his fractured ankle together. Plates and screws were used to repair two toes and mid-foot bones that suffered a Lisfranc fracture and dislocation.
Were Federal Agents Involved?
For more than a year there has been growing speculation that undercover agents and police officers took active roles in the rioting while encouraging protesters to go into the Capitol.
Bobby Powell, then a radio journalist from Michigan, filmed a man he said was an undercover agent pulling a large sheet of tempered glass out of a window on the patio near the Columbus Doors.
The man had earlier approached Powell and asked him why he didn’t take advantage of the already smashed window and enter the Capitol. When Powell turned away and spun back around, his camera caught the man pulling out the glass and dropping it in a heap on the ground.
Powell also encountered another man, dressed in tactical gear, holding open the Columbus Doors with a long wooden dowel and shoving people into the foyer leading to the Great Rotunda.
Neither the glass man nor the doorman ever appeared on the FBI’s Jan. 6 most-wanted website.
Powell spent a frustrating two years trying to get the FBI and the media to notice his video. The strain led to four heart attacks between Jan. 6, 2021, and Nov. 22, 2022. In the more than three months since, Powell suffered three more heart attacks.
January 6 defendant William Pope of Topeka, Kansas, discovered GoPro video of three MPD undercover officers on the exterior northwest stairs of the Capitol. One of the men climbed a barricade, pushed protesters up the stairs, and urged protesters to head toward the Capitol entrance, Pope reported in a court motion to unseal the video.
The other two officers walked behind the late Babbitt, and one stated his belief that someone would get shot that day. About an hour later, Babbitt was shot by USCP Lt. Michael Byrd as she climbed into a broken window leading into the Speaker’s Lobby. She was pronounced dead 30 minutes later.
Defense attorney Brad Geyer spent months investigating more than 100 suspicious actors who were at the Capitol. Geyer identified a core group that took part in the breaching of the Columbus Doors and incited a crowd on the east side to go into the Capitol.
Many on Geyer’s suspicious actors list were tied to the Salt and Light Brigade, an Ohio-based Christian group. Geyer argued in court papers that some of the Salt and Light members engaged in a “stunning conspiracy” to attack the Capitol, but most have faced no charges. A few weeks after an article on the group appeared in The Epoch Times, an Ohio pastor tied to the group—William Dunfee—was arrested by the FBI.
Other suspicious actors continue to draw interest. A man known only by the hashtag #RedOnRedGlasses, was seen on video launching a long 2×4 piece of lumber through a Capitol window, and later trying to kick in office doors inside the Capitol. RedOnRed was in the hallway outside the Speaker’s Lobby when Babbitt was shot. He is listed as No. 300 on the FBI most-wanted list, but has not been publicly identified.
Ray Epps, who was captured on a viral video from Jan. 5 urging protesters to go into the Capitol the next day, is again the subject of intense speculation after Carlson’s March 6 special. Carlson claimed that Epps lied to Jan. 6 Select Committee investigators about what time he left the Capitol grounds.
Epps texted his nephew at 2:12 p.m. and said he “Orchestrated” the protest. He told the committee he was no longer at the Capitol when the text was sent. Carlson said security video he found shows Epps on one of the west terraces a half-hour after that.
Epps was at the first breach of a police barricade just before 1 p.m. on Jan. 6. He stepped over a toppled barricade on the west front and was spotted numerous times in the crowd during the afternoon.
Epps was interviewed by the Select Committee and twice by the FBI, but he was never arrested or charged for his actions at the Capitol, despite admitting to the FBI that he was likely guilty of trespassing.
Epps told the FBI he showed his son how to use a tourniquet on Jan. 6 because was expecting a bombing near the Capitol.
“It was my fear that they would set off an explosion in one of the side streets.” Epps said, according to a recording of the interview obtained by The Epoch Times. “Then we tried our best to remain in the middle. We also made an effort to reach the center early and avoid the sides. In case of an emergency, my kit included a first aid kit. It was possible to help.”
A mysterious, well-dressed woman who wore a pink beret on Jan. 6 is being sought by one defense attorney to determine if she lured her client into the Capitol so he could be charged. Attorney Kira West, who represents Darrell Neely in his Jan. 6 criminal case, said she needs to identify Pink Beret in order to fully defend her client.
“Pink Beret directed Mr. Neely’s entrance into the Capitol.” West contended in a court filing. “There were associates with her that day, and she seemed to be able to provide information that was beyond what a regular citizen would have.
“Mr. Neely needs to know who she is and why she was there,” West spoke. “He also needs to understand if he was targeted by her that day and for what purpose.”
Retention of exculpatory evidence
Many defense lawyers have claimed that the Department of Justice did not provide all evidence required under law. Ronald Colton McAbee, a former deputy sheriff, claimed in court filings the DOJ provided bodycam footage without audio.
Investigators found the same file, with sound, and it showed McAbee wasn’t assaulting any officer at Lower West Terrace. He was simply shielding him from the officer and trying to get him up to his feet. Court papers state that. Despite McAbee’s request to be released from pretrial custody and the discovery, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that McAbee should remain in jail.
McAbee, and the Jan. 6-protesters were referred to by Sullivan. “terrorists” During a court hearing. Sullivan was removed from the matter.
Exculpatory evidence became a major sticking point in the seditious-conspiracy trial, which ran from late September to late November 2022, of Oath Keepers founder Elmer Stewart Rhodes III and four other individuals.
Judge Amit Mehta did not allow defense attorneys the right to summon a former New York Police Sergeant and Oath Keepers Member to tell how he and others helped an Oath Keeper rescue 16 U.S. Capitol Police officers from the Columbus Doors.
Michael Nichols King Ferry, New York approached Johnson just near the Capitol’s East steps. Johnson then asked Johnson for assistance in saving his colleagues. Nichols led Johnson up the stairs with Steve Clayton (a fellow Oath Keepers) and the rest of the Oath Keepers members to the foyer. Then, the officer group was led down the steps. Rico La Starza from Florida captured the operation in a viral video.
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