(RepublicanNews.org) – Judicial Watch, the conservative legal watchdog, announced that it plans to sue the nation’s capital for turning down Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for all footage captured by Washington D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) during the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6th, 2021.
The group claims that they filed the request back in August 2021, to obtain audio and video content captured by officer body cams as they responded to the mob gathered at the Capitol Building earlier that year. The MPD denied the watchdog’s request because they claimed the footage was still being used as part of their “ongoing investigation and criminal proceedings.”
Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, published a statement on Monday, July 8th, about the situation and said that the American people “deserve the full picture” about what occurred on Jan. 6th at the Capitol and questioned what the D.C. government was “hiding” by not releasing the requested footage. Fitton said the MPD “should be transparent.” He noted how footage from law enforcement is typically released shortly after an event while three years have now passed since the Capitol riot.
Fitton appeared on “Just The News, No Noise” on July 8th and blasted the MPD for not following the rules for “disclosure, transparency, prosecution, and investigation.” The reason for that is, according to the Judicial Watch president, the issue has become “thoroughly politicized,” forcing the watchdog to go to court to “fight over this basic information.” He believes whatever the police body cam footage shows, it will “be in the public interest” to see it sooner rather than later, especially because many voters may make their decision in the next presidential election based on how they perceive that event.
Judicial Watch filed an appeal to the MPD’s denial of their request, and specifically requested from Michael Fanone, a former MPD officer who testified to the House committee investigating the issue, claiming he was violently attacked, which he said was “an important part of the record” for the investigation and the “country’s understanding” of how he was “assaulted and nearly killed.”
Fitton and Judicial Watch believe that footage and the rest of the body cam footage should be available for the public to review so they can make up their own minds about what took place and how they feel about it.
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