In what amounts to a ransom demand, Washington, D.C., has set a price of over $1.5 million to release body camera videos from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot to a legal watchdog group.
Judicial Watch today told Secrets that the District lawyers said that there are over 1,756 Metropolitan Police Department videos covering 1,047 hours and that it wants $25 per minute to edit and produce the videos from body cameras worn by the city police during the daylong riot.
According to the conservative legal group, that amounts to a bill of $1,570,635.
“There never has been a legitimate reason to withhold the January 6 police body cam videos,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “If they wanted the videos out for political reasons, they’d be public, but instead the D.C. government wants more than $1.5 million in order for the public to view its January 6 videos,” he added.
Prior to President Donald Trump’s pardoning of all of the Jan. 6 suspects and convicts, the police said that they couldn’t release the videos to the public because they were part of hundreds of Department of Justice investigations.
Now the police said that editing out personal information is just too expensive to hand over the videos for free.
“The District reiterates that the [body work camera] footage may capture certain personnel, namely third parties, who maintain cognizable privacy interests in their names, images, and likenesses, and disclosure of these people’s identities would not serve the public interest nor shed light on MPD’s performance of its statutory duties,” said city lawyers.
“Teresa Quon Hyden, assistant general counsel at MPD, has calculated the total hours of responsive footage as 1,047.09 and has estimated that the cost of redacting these videos would be at least $25 per minute of footage. MPD would have to locate a vendor to implement these redactions, and it is unclear whether the District would need to accept bids from multiple vendors on such a large undertaking,” added the city’s filing.
The city’s lawyers have asked Judicial Watch to seek less footage and to provide help in paying for edited video that is turned over.
.@RealDonaldTrump DOJ signals settlement in $30M Ashli Babbitt ‘wrongful death’ suit https://t.co/Y3el4xMzNb https://t.co/3Aq0GxaxT3
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) March 3, 2025
More than any other independent watchdog, Judicial Watch has pressed for full transparency in Jan. 6 cases. In this one, it initially filed for the body camera footage worn by Officer Michael Fanone, one of the first responders who was attacked by rioters.
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Judicial Watch later expanded the demand to all footage of the day held by city police.
Just yesterday, Secrets reported that Judicial Watch scored a possible win in its $30 million wrongful death lawsuit in the U.S. Capitol Police killing of unarmed protester Ashli Babbitt. In a turnabout, the Justice Department said it would seek to negotiate a settlement in the case.
