Washington DC - House Speaker Mike Johnson recently announced that the faces of rioters in footage of the January 6 Capitol attack will be blurred in an effort to protect them from legal action.

The Louisiana Republican shared the plans during a press conference on Tuesday as he prepares to release the footage to the public, a move he deemed "critical and important."

"We have to blur some 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 [Department of Justice]," he said.

House Republicans have long sought to change the narrative about the events that took place that day, insisting the riots were not an insurrection.

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Earlier this year, Kevin McCarthy, who preceded Johnson as Speaker, granted thousands of hours of unreleased footage to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sought to argue that accounts of the riots had been exaggerated and any violence that took place was not at the fault of Donald Trump supporters.

Johnson, an ardent Trump ally who participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, says he believes it best that the American people "draw their own conclusions" from the footage.

"I don't think partisan elected officials in Washington should present a narrative and expect that it should be seen as the ultimate truth," he added.