Legal Watchdog: D.C. Police Demand $1.57 Million To Release Jan. 6 Bodycam Footage

From The Federalist:

The Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department is charging the conservative legal watchdog, Judicial Watch, more than $1.5 million to access bodycam footage of the Jan. 6 Capitol protests.

On Tuesday, the non-profit published a press release outlining the department’s demands following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed last summer. Judicial Watch filed the suit after local law enforcement refused to release the footage in August 2021. 

“The DC Metro Police initially rejected Judicial Watch’s request because, it claimed, the videos were, at the time, ‘part of an ongoing investigation and criminal proceeding,’” Judicial Watch said Tuesday. “But since President Trumps [sic] pardons of January 6 defendants, the DC government will make public the videos (supposedly containing over one thousand hours of footage) if Judicial Watch agrees to pay over $1.5 million.”

President Donald Trump pardoned nearly every defendant charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot immediately upon his second inauguration in January. The executive order granted “full, complete and unconditional pardons” to an estimated 1,500 people and commuted the sentences of another 14. 

“We hope they come out tonight,” Trump said on the evening of his first night back in office. Many of those charged with misconduct just walked into the open Capitol building, and Jacob Chansley, infamously known as the “Q-Anon Shaman,” was even escorted around the building by law enforcement officials. Chansley was sentenced to 41 months in prison in the fall of 2021. 

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