CLAY: News out there surrounding the release of the January 6th footage from inside of the Capitol that is going to be provided to Tucker Carlson. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is doing it. Julie Kelly, senior writer at American Greatness, author of January 6: How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right. Julie, for people out there who may not have heard this news, what exactly is going on, and do you like the decision as it pertains to all of this so-far unreleased camera footage of January 6?
KELLY: I’m very excited to see the news. Clay, as you know, I’ve been covering this since May of 2021 with my first column asking for the release of this 14,000 hours of surveillance video captured by Capitol security cameras on January 6. It has been designated “highly sensitive government material” under very strict protective orders in every January 6th case. But this was a promise made by lawmakers, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy who said last month he supported the public release of all this video, and it looks like he’s at least partially come through on that promise and turned over not 14,000 hours but 41,000 hours over to Tucker’s team, and his producers and researchers are already going through it.
CLAY: Do we know how much of the footage has actually been publicly released before? The 41,000 hours is just a voluminous amount, but do we know what has been in sort of the public purview to this point?
KELLY: Very little. So, the 41,000 hours is the entire 24-hour roll of footage in every… Now, this covers not just the Capitol Building inside, but also Capitol grounds, other House and Senate buildings. This is their entire closed circuit TV system. So that’s why it’s this huge amount of video. I think it’s like five years or something (laughs) worth of video. So, a lot of it will be relevant to what happened inside and outside the Capitol. But, you know, this is important because very little has been shown. Because it’s under these tight protective orders as of March of 2021, you know, just tiny, 30-, 45-second clips are introduced into evidence and January 6th cases.
The House Impeachment Committee had access to very short clips. The January 6th committee showed very brief clips, including famously Senator Josh Hawley allegedly running through the halls when the breach occurred. So, these are cherry-picked clips produced by this Department of Justice, House Democrats, and this is why they do not want this surveillance video released. But I feel very confident in Tucker’s team. You know, he’s been covering this since the very beginning as well, produced a Patriot Purge, the three-part documentary about the new war on terror against the right using January 6th as the pretext for it. So, I am fully confident that he is going to come up with some explosive series of clips with context and get this out to his audience using maximum impact.
CLAY: No doubt that Tucker and his staff are super competent and very skilled at narrative discussion, narrative shaping, and helping to understand the complexity of many different stories. Having said that, 41,000 hours. I don’t know how big Tucker’s staff is, but you could well imagine, I mean, how long it would take to simply have an individual review this is almost overwhelming to even contemplate. Do we know how big the staff is going to be that will have access to all this footage and how difficult do you expect that it will be to try to put some sort of narrative cohesion into this larger basically video dump?
KELLY: Well, I mean, it is a massive project. I believe that his producers and researchers know pretty much what to look for because, look, the idea that this could just be uploaded to a public platform — you see people on the right who are very agitated saying, “Kevin McCarthy broke his promise for public release.” Fine. I’m less concerned about that and putting it in the capable hands of people who know where to look, who understand the timeline, who know inside and outside the Capitol needs to be exposed. What has been concealed? For example, it’s my understanding that the security cameras outside the Columbus door within the Rotunda and in the speaker’s lobby were not on that day.
CLAY: (crosstalk) It’s always convenient how that happens, isn’t it?
KELLY: Isn’t it amazing? That in itself is a huge scandal. Now you can get 100 different people on Twitter splicing that together. But one powerful voice like Tucker, since he has been covering this from the beginning, he understands what’s at stake not just for public accountability and transparency, but for the defendants, because they have spent… A lot of this has been withheld from them in discovery, in the discovery process.
CLAY: Yes.
KELLY: So there’s a lot at stake. So, I understand people are disgruntled that it should be on some public platform. By the same token, if you don’t know this story inside and out from the beginning, it would be useless to just have it up there and have it just sort of disparate, you know, clips and posts all over the place without this maximum impact that I think will come from. Tucker.
CLAY: Julie, what’s the latest? I mean, the most recent report I saw was that there potentially could be a thousand more people being charged with crimes before all is said and done. We’re now sitting over two years after January 6. I mean, it feels like we’re going to go through a whole presidential election cycle before this all gets resolved. What’s the latest from your perspective you think people should know?
KELLY: Yeah, we absolutely are. So, we’re closing in on a thousand defendants so far. They’re arresting people every week. Matthew Graves, who is the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — Biden campaign adviser and appointee — told the Washington Post a few months ago that he believes that the total caseload would reach 2,000 total defendants. They’re actually starting to worry that the statute of limitations on these low-level misdemeanors will run out before they have a chance to prosecute. (crosstalk)
CLAY: That’s some small measure of positivity there, right? I mean, that’s just so crazy that statute of limitations might be able to run out.
KELLY: I mean, it’s preposterous that this DOJ at the same time is fixating on this four-hour disturbance over two years ago, while other serious crimes, especially related to the 2020 riots, not only are being completely memory holed, but dropped by the same DOJ. So, that’s why public transparency and accountability is so important. That’s why I applaud Kevin McCarthy for giving these tapes over to Tucker’s team. I am confident in what’s coming out.
But also what’s coming out in these trials are the bodycam footage, recordings from D.C. Metro Police. And I’ll tell you, those tapes are as explosive as anything that I’ve seen from surveillance video because it shows police misconduct on a broad scale on January 6th, provoking the crowd, attacking innocent Americans, doing nothing more than standing outside public property, exercising their First Amendment rights, and what these D.C. police officers did is really egregious. That demands as much public exposure as the surveillance video from January 6.
CLAY: So another question for you — and we’re talking to Julie Kelly, who’s done fabulous work on all this January 6th balderdash — and that is a fun word to use. I don’t think I’ve used it a lot on the show.
KELLY: (laughing)
CLAY: What do you think is going to happen with Trump? I was in the camp — and you know this because I’ve talked about it on the show for a long time — that Merrick Garland was clearly going to charge him with something. I now believe because of the Biden missteps as it pertains to classified documents that it’s less likely. I don’t think that Trump is going to get charged over these things. What do you think?
KELLY: I never thought he would be charged on classified documents. Their case was always sketchy from the beginning. It was just a ruse to seek this search warrant to raid Mar-a-Lago in August. You know, they took 13,000 pieces of evidence. Only about 100 allegedly are classified documents, and that you have to take DOJ’s word for which I don’t. So, I never thought any indictment would be on classified documents.
I still believe — and you and I have talked about this for months. I believe wholeheartedly that now special counsel Jack Smith will indict him on crimes related to January 6th, and if the Proud Boys — members of the Proud Boys, five of them are now on trial in D.C. for seditious conspiracy; the government is making Donald Trump a central piece of their case. If any of them are convicted of seditious conspiracy, this will build legal momentum to bring the same sort of indictment against Donald Trump for January 6th.
CLAY: What do you think the time frame on that would be, Julie?
KELLY: I mean, if this Proud Boys trial will probably continue through March. So, let’s say end of March, there’s convictions. You know, I’m thinking, you know, summertime at the latest. Jack Smith’s — the Imaginary Jack Smith — has been working for the past few months. (laughing)
CLAY: Well, because it is interesting, right, the timing on this based on DOJ precedent? We’ve got Iowa in early January, the primary/caucus, whatever you want to call it. I would think that if they’re going to do anything to Trump, they would have to do something by August probably, right? Because then it gets so close to the primary season that you’re directly wading in politically even if they’re not. I think you and I both agree that’s what they’re doing regardless. But I think it would be harder to bring charges against him once we get to August or so.
KELLY: I agree with you (laughs) and I know we had this discussion last year about bringing charges before the 2022 midterms.
CLAY: That’s right.
KELLY: But that’s when they came up with the classified documents thing, which I think was also, you know, a pivot and a diversion and a reason to raid Mar-a-Lago looking for other evidence. I still think some of what they collected, they’re going to use as evidence for a case and for January 6th against Trump. But, yes, it would have to be before late summer at the earliest, at the latest.
CLAY: Julie, I’ve donated money because I think all these January 6th defendants deserve the best legal representation they can get. For people out there who are interested in doing the same, what would you tell them?
KELLY: I would say, you know, Patriot Freedom Project where you donate, it’s not just helping with legal funds, but also supporting these families.
CLAY: Yep.
KELLY: I know a lot of these families independently have GiftSendGo accounts, which I also would direct people to. If you go to GiftSendGo and look up “January 6th defendants,” you’ll be able to find them. That’s a great way to help these families whose lives are being destroyed. They’re being bankrupted, losing their businesses, their source of income, even for low-level trespassing charges. It’s really tragic. So, I appreciate your support, not just on the show, but financially, of course, as well.
CLAY: Julie, you’re doing incredible work here. We’re going to keep having you on as frequently as we can. How can people follow you individually to keep tabs on all this?
KELLY: Well, thank you so much for covering my work. It’s so important to help get the message out. So, all my work is at American Greatness, TheAMGreatness.com, and I post a lot very frequently on Twitter @julie_kelly2, too.
CLAY: Fantastic work. Julie Kelly, she is helping to make sure that we do not forget about all these January 6th political prosecutions. We’ll talk to you again soon, Julie.
KELLY: Thanks, Clay. Have a great week.
CLAY: Same to you.