He went on to basically call House Speaker Mike Johnson a criminal, saying, "The Republican Speaker of the House is now actively trying to prevent arrests for the federal crime of attacking the capitol on January 6. The federal crime of accessory after the fact requires knowledge that a crime has been committed against the U.S. and that a person with that knowledge then assists the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment."
"Now keep those words in mind, when you listen to what Mike Johnson said he is doing to the thousands of hours of security video that were recorded at the Capitol on January 6th before he makes all that video publicly available.
Mike Johnson (in a clip from yesterday's press conference): "We have to blur some of the faces of persons who participated in the events of that day because we don't want them to be retaliated against-- and to be charged by the DOJ."
O'Connell continued: "That is the first time in history that a Speaker of the House has said that he doesn't want people who committed federal crimes to be charged by the Department of Justice. That is an admission of accessory after the fact. An accessory after the fact is trying to prevent the apprehension of criminals-- trying to prevent the punishment of criminals. Mike Johnson says-- with that goofy smile-- like he's a cultist in the middle of a cult, all of whom believe that we don't want the Justice Department to charge people after they commit federal crimes on videotape. And there's more."
Mike Johnson (in another clip from yesterday's press conference): "It's a slow process to get it done-- we're working steadily on it. We've hired additional personnel to do that."
O'Connell raged on: "So the same Republican Speaker of the House that blocked funding for Israel by attaching cuts to the IRS workforce to that bill, has hired additional federal workers whose title should be "Accessories After the Fact." Mike Johnson, who wants to fire IRS workers who investigate federal tax crimes, has hired new federal workers to cover up crimes. Mike Johnson is the most pro-crime Speaker in the House of Representatives. In fact, he's the only one who has publicly admitted to participating in (and leading) a cover up of federal crimes."
"The Speaker seems to think that he's not technically guilty of being an accessory after the fact because the Justice Department already has all of this video without any blurred faces of the Trump-crazed criminals attacking the Capitol but the truth is-- throughout the history of American law enforcement, citizens have been identifying criminals for law enforcement that the officials could not identify themselves . . . Hundreds of the Trump-crazed criminals have been arrested only because they were identified by citizens who saw photographs of them or saw video of them and knew who they were-- or figured out who they were-- and alerted the FBI. Mike Johnson wants to prevent all of that. Mike Johnson wants to stop every one of those arrests that can still be made because an alert citizen makes a call to the FBI. He wants to stop hundreds of arrests that could be made."
Summing up, O'Connell said, "Mike Johnson has no legal authority to blur the faces of the criminals in that video. That video does not belong to Mike Johnson. That video does not belong to the Republican Party. That video was created by and paid for by the U.S. Congress-- a branch of the U.S. government, which means that it is owned by the federal government, whose authority comes entirely from us, the voters. We all own that video-- we paid for it. Mike Johnson is tampering with the people's video recorded in the people's house. This could never have happened before Donald Trump criminalized Congressional Republicans-- some of whom participated in Trump's criminal plot before January 6th."
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