The FBI isn’t having a good Year. Christopher Wray was grilled like a steak in Senate hearings over why they’re so hot to round up Trump supporters while covering up evidence of child abuse. On top of that, the big September 18 “Justice for J6” rally which terrorized D.C. into putting the fences back up and activating the National Guard attracted nobody but the press and undercover agents. Now, even the courts are against them. A reasonable judge declared they can’t cover up the surveillance video any longer.
FBI loses in court
On Tuesday, September 21, U.S. District Chief Judge Beryl Howell basically ruled that prosecutors have been smoking too much of the chronic. The FBI doesn’t want the public to see the surveillance videos of the January 6. non-insurrection. The ones which show mindless barbarians basically wandering in off the street unchallenged. It’s obvious that security “guards” were more interested in acting as tour guides than preventing domestic terror.
One wrongly accused insurrectionist, Eric Torrens, is shown, as he admits, after he “entered the building through a broken door, and walked around parts of the building. The government had noted in court documents that the surveillance cameras recorded his entry and his movements within the building.” He played tourist.
The FBI couldn’t come out and say they don’t want the public to see how badly they failed at their jobs. It might start to look like it was intentional and that the barbarians were expected. Instead they say the footage can’t be shown because it would give away important security secrets.
That’s a load of crap and everybody knows it. Prosecutors actually tried to argue that “by ‘revealing the locations of cameras’ it could help ‘bad actors’ the next time.” Judge Howell busted that bubble by noting a public tour would reveal exactly the same information.
Prosecutors were fishing for excuses the Judge noted in her ruling, calling prosecutors’ arguments “too speculative.” The opinion officially dated September 15 calls their concerns “too broad.”
She also pointed out how many cases are riding on the events of that day. The FBI is already processing “hundreds of cases” with “new cases being brought and pending cases being resolved by plea agreement every week.”
The public interest
The public, judge Howell wrote, “has an interest in understanding the conduct underlying the charges in these cases.” What better way to tell than live footage. The FBI cringes to even think about it.
The public also wants to see “the government’s prosecutorial decision-making both in bringing criminal charges and resolving these charges by entering into plea agreements with defendants.”
The videos will be released. She just wants Buzzfeed News and their buddies off her back. Their media coalition is the one “petitioning judges on a rolling basis for videos that prosecutors have relied on in January 6 cases.”
The FBI also tried to argue that patching the videos together is bad for security. Judge Howell didn’t buy that argument either.
“This footage, when combined with other footage from nearby cameras, could be used to track individual rioters moving through the building thereby creating a visual pathway which other bad actors could use in planning their breach point and pathway for future attacks,” Prosecutors claimed.
Again, all you have to do is take the tour. It shows all the same places the videos do, including the “crypt” where barbarians were allowed to force entry without question. The FBI really doesn’t want you to know that.