Former Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney bashed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for working to blur the faces of people involved in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, in security footage being released from the incident.
Johnson said on Tuesday that the release of security footage from the riot at the Capitol had been delayed due to wanting to blur the faces of participants of the riot "because we don't want them to be retaliated against and be charged by the DOJ." Cheney said the Justice Department already has the tapes and that the video will "not change the facts" of the riot while on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 on Tuesday.
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“I think that we’re experiencing a situation where Speaker Johnson is somehow attempting to suggest that there is something in these tapes that would change the facts of what happened,” Cheney said. “There’s nothing in the tape that can change the facts of what happened that day, can change the violent assault.”
She also reiterated her call for the tapes from the Capitol to be publicly released for transparency, saying that Johnson is now "dragging his feet" on releasing the surveillance footage.
“I have called on him to release the tapes," Cheney said. "We need to make sure obviously that we protected security issues at the Capitol, but at this point, what’s happening — I don’t know why he's dragging his feet after having proclaimed he’s going to release them and he ought to release them."
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Cheney has been a vocal critic of House Republicans and former President Donald Trump for their actions after the 2020 election. She also served as vice chairwoman of the House select committee on the Capitol riot until it was disbanded at the end of the 117th Congress. The committee did not publicly release the full tapes from Jan. 6, 2021.
The Wyoming Republican lost her seat in 2022 after being defeated by GOP challenger Harriet Hageman by nearly 40 points in the Republican primary.