When House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) began releasing 40,000 hours of January 6 surveillance footage inside the Capitol Building, he didn't realize that it might lead to yet another investigation of House members--or did he?

After seeing the footage, or at least some of it, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) is calling for an investigation into the January 6 House Select Committee, claiming that it ignored evidence that didn't fit its narrative.  

“Why didn’t Liz Cheney and [Adam Kinzinger] ever refer to any of these tapes?” Lee posted on X in reference to video that showed police assisting rioters inside the Capitol that day.

“Maybe they never looked for them. Maybe they never even questioned their own narrative,” he continued. “Maybe they were just too busy selectively leaking the text messages of Republicans they wanted to defeat.”

See for themselves

“This decision will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials,” Johnson said about releasing the footage.

So far, over 1,100 people have been charged with crimes committed during the January 6, 2021 breach of the Capitol building. Many of them were identified using the video footage along with facial recognition.

The Justice Department reports that more than 400 have been charged for assaulting police officers on January 6.

There was also an estimated $1.5 million in damage to the building on January 6.

The left likes to call it an "insurrection," but this is not an accurate description of the events of that day, particularly if Capitol police were assisting people in entering the building.

Not an insurrection

The rioters did not enter the building with an organized purpose of taking it over, they mostly just seemed to mill around, doing some damage. A few took items, such as (allegedly) then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) laptop.

Police were easily able to clear the area within a few hours without any kind of organized resistance and resume the certification of electoral votes that had been in progress before the protesters entered.

Using the term "insurrection," as the January 6 Select Committee gleefully did over and over again, increased the perception that former President Donald Trump was trying to overturn the 2020 election when in fact he appeared to be doing nothing more than making sure the election was fair and not fraudulent.

Other than widespread mail-in balloting, unmonitored drop boxes, and social media suppression of facts pertinent to the election, that is.

The fact that Johnson wants to release the footage should tell us everything we need to know about what is in it.