Report: FBI got 'sizzle reels' on every Jan. 6 defendant

FPI / March 30, 2023

Capitol Police compiled so-called "sizzle reels" of every protester who entered the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6. 2021.

The video compilations were prepared for the FBI, retired Capitol Police Deputy Chief J.J. Pickett told Just the News in a report published on Monday.

Pickett said he had been briefed by colleagues on the "sizzle reels" his department's video security experts compiled, which he said took months to complete.

"The FBI would send them a picture on some kind of online clip, something of a person," Pickett said during a wide-ranging interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast. "And they would go to that area in the Capitol Building looking at the cameras, and it was kind of like a Where's Waldo. And they would find that person.

"And then from there, they would follow their movement, both forward and back from that location, and basically stitch together a video of that person from the time they entered Capitol grounds until the time they exited Capitol grounds. And they would put all that into one clip."

Pickett, who retired a few months after the J6 protest, said he is not certain whether Department of Justice prosecutors turned over the "sizzle reels" to the legal representatives of Jan. 6 defendants.

"The prosecution has to divulge all the information they have, and the FBI and the Capitol Police have to divulge it all to the prosecutors so they have it," he said.

In a <a href="https://justthenews.com/sites/default/files/2023-03/gov.uscourts.dcd_.228004.90.0.pdf">Friday court filing</a>, federal prosecutors stated that, in the case of J6 defendant William Pope, there is police body-cam footage they don't want to make public that shows D.C. Metropolitan Police officers — some in plain clothes — consorting with the protesters and even exhorting "Go! Go! Go!" as the protesters are trying to breach the Capitol.

In a brief filed late Friday by the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington, D.C., prosecutors wrote:

"The specific footage, GoPro video recorded by an MPD Police Officer who was stationed at the Capitol in an evidence-gathering capacity, captures the officer shouting words to the effect of 'Go! Go! Go!' (MPD-005-000035 at time stamp 2:37), 'Go! Go! Go!' (MPD-005-000035 at time stamp 7:23), and 'Keeping going! Keep going!' (MPD-005-000035 at time stamp 8:16) apparently to the individuals in front of him on the balustrade of the U.S. Capitol's northwest staircase around 2:15 p.m.

"At other times in these videos, the officer and the two other plain clothes officers with him appear to join the crowd around them in various chants, to include 'drain the swamp,' 'U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!', and 'Whose house? Our house!' "

Pope's defense team has asked the court to make the video footage public, but federal prosecutors said they want the trial judge's protective order to remain in place to keep the video from becoming public.

"To do so would be like using a hammer when only a scalpel is needed," the government argued in opposing the release of the tapes, adding they believed Pope's "desire to try his case in the media rather than in a court of law is illegitimate."

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