The Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department wants to charge Judicial Watch an astonishing one and a half million dollars for its police bodycam footage of the January 6th protest. Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all audio and video recordings captured on body-worn cameras during the response to protests in and around the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. The D.C. Metro Police initially rejected Judicial Watch’s request, claiming the videos were, quote, part of an ongoing investigation and criminal proceeding. Judicial Watch then sued for the videos in June of 2024. Since President Trump’s hardens for January 6th defendants ended any criminal investigations, the D.C.

Police then told Judicial Watch it would release the videos if the group paid one and a half million dollars to the district to process the 1,000 hours of videos. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton had this to say about the one and a half million dollar request. The January 6th videos, all of which could be released, there’s clearly something there that the government doesn’t want released, otherwise they wouldn’t be trying to charge this abusive amount of money, 1.5 million dollars. Now many people noted that that sounds like extortion. That’s like saying no. But do you think Judicial Watch should spend 1.5 million dollars to get videos that don’t show faces? That are public records? This comes as Judicial Watch is in federal court representing Ashley Babbitt’s estate in a 30 million dollar wrongful death lawsuit against the federal government.

Babbitt, an Air Force veteran from California, was shot and killed in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. We are in the lead again on this important issue, which is January 6th, an event which the left has used to try to destroy our constitutional republic by jailing their political opponents, including President Trump. So yeah, it’s a big deal. It’s not the big deal they think it is. It’s a big deal because of their abuse and misuse of the event that day to abuse the civil rights of millions of Americans. [tr:trw].

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