Judicial Watch under its irrepressible leader, Tom Fitton, prevailed, and the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department released over 1,000 hours of body-worn camera footage in 1,627 videos from the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol event. The videos were released because of an April 2026 court ruling in a DC Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit. The videos are available via the Judicial Watch website here and at http://www.judicialwatch.org/january6bodycam. I encourage you to visit them.
Judicial Watch filed the DC FOIA lawsuit in June 2024 after the DC Police denied an August 2021 request for all body-worn camera footage recorded by police officers responding to the January 6, 2021, events at and around the U.S. Capitol (Judicial Watch v. District of Columbia (No. 2024-CAB-003453)).
Earlier this year, a local DC court dealt a major blow to government secrecy by ruling that the DC Police could not broadly blur and censor the footage. Rejecting DC Police’s claim that it could withhold faces and voices of everyone except law enforcement—and its assertion that producing the footage would cost more than $1.5 million—the court held that any privacy interests were minimal and outweighed by the overwhelming public interest in disclosure. The ruling cleared the way for this release of bodycam footage that documents one of the most consequential events in recent American history.
Victory! 1,000+ Hours of January 6 Bodycam Video Released by DC Police! Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood @JudicialWatch! pic.twitter.com/yjFZYsFlRl
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) July 8, 2026