This raises all sorts of interesting questions, no? CNN reporter Alayna Treene reported an aside from January 6 committee chair Bennie Thompson as a reaction to a new policy of access to surveillance video of the riot that really should become the story. Kevin McCarthy is now allowing controlled access to all of the video for House members, a step that Nancy Pelosi never took, so that the entire Congress can decide for themselves what happened that day.

As it turns out, that’s a step that even the J6 committee members never bothered to take — even though their select panel’s only mission was to investigate the riot:

Greene told me she doesn’t know "who all's in the room” or if US Capitol Police will be there, but said there are instructions her team has been given, including "how to view the videos, obviously, because there's so many hours.”

— Alayna Treene (@alaynatreene) March 8, 2023

Thompson said he doesn’t think any of the Jan. 6 members themselves ever had access to the footage — they let only staff view it. "I'm actually not aware of any member of the committee who had access. We had a team of employees who kind of went through the video."

— Alayna Treene (@alaynatreene) March 8, 2023

Say what? The select committee consisted of nine members of Congress that worked for 18 months on probing the riot to the exclusion of any other issue or policy — which is why this got handled by a select committee rather than a standing committee in the first place. Surveillance video was the primary evidence of the riot, the actions taken, and … not a single one of the committee members ever reviewed it? In 18 months?

Instead, they farmed it out to a “team of employees,” Thompson told Treene. Hiring investigators to do heavy lifting is not unusual for congressional investigations; even in hearings, panels will occasionally have their counsel ask questions in place of the members themselves. However, it’s still assumed in those cases that the members themselves will carefully review the evidence and materials to ensure that their employees are interpreting them correctly, at the very least, and aspirationally to achieve some level of fluency and expertise in the case.

One has to wonder what instructions this “team of employees” had, too. Were they instructed to get a comprehensive, fair, and balanced view of the riot from all of the surveillance video? Or were they tasked instead to pull cuts that would only support the preordained narrative that the panel desired to present?

Not for the first or last time, let’s point out that this would not have taken place had Pelosi allowed the committee to be appointed properly. If the J6 committee had a proper partisan balance with skeptics as well, this nonsense would have been exposed immediately and addressed. Likely it never would have happened at all, as those more skeptical committee members would have demanded access to the video up front and this issue would have come to a head at the start rather than three months after the committee report. Add that lost opportunity to all of the skeptical cross-examination of witnesses that never took place, the witnesses that never got called at all, and so on.

Also, this makes another Thompson claim even more suspect. Remember this from yesterday? Kerry Picket pressed Thompson on whether the audio from surveillance had been enhanced with sound effects, and Thompson denied it:

Mr. Thompson also said it was “not true” that the committee selectively edited 14,000 hours of security footage to make the riot inside the Capitol seem more chaotic and violent than it was.

The charges of deception made by Mr. Carlson on Monday’s program included adding sounds of screaming people; withholding video of deceased Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick; and editing a clip to show Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, fleeing the Senate by himself, implying he was a coward.

If Thompson never watched the source video, how would he know? In fact, how would any of the select committee members know whether their video production accurately reflected the overall events of January 6 when they hadn’t even bothered to review the source evidence for themselves?

Thompson’s aside strongly suggests that the panel spent most of its time preening for the cameras while outsourcing its duties entirely. That would certainly explain its output, especially the panel’s insistence on prime-time hearings to push narratives rather than any in-depth review of the myriad issues surrounding the riot. And it also explains why the committee members and their supporters are so anxious to make sure no one else gets a chance to look at the raw evidence — and reach their own conclusions not just about January 6 but also the January 6 committee.