Speaker Mike Johnson accused by ex-DOJ official of 'tainting' the Jan. 6 jury pool

During an appearance on MSNBC early Saturday morning, former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner accused House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) of meddling in upcoming Jan 6 insurrection trials by releasing altered footage of the storming of the Capitol.

Speaking with host Jonathan Capehart, the legal analyst agreed that Johnson's efforts to have the faces of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists blurred in the released video footage amounts to an attempt to "taint" the jury pool.

"House Speaker Mike Johnson says he plans on blurring the faces of Capitol rioters in new footage. Is he publicly sending the message that the January 6th rioters did nothing wrong? My concern is, my question is: is he potentially tainting the jury pool by doing this?"

"He is potentially tainting the jury pool," Kirschner confirmed, "by what he just decided to do by releasing video of folks who may have been involved in criminal activity."

Adding, "Now let me hasten to add, not everybody who went to the Capitol I'm quite sure on January six necessarily committed a crime. Mike Johnson doesn't know, he wasn't there, he cannot account for what every single person did. He just said, I'm going to blur their faces to protect both the innocent and the guilty. That, to me, feels deeply unpatriotic and disrespectful of the police officers, many of whom were beaten to within an inch of their lives that day."

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"Here is the thing: all of this will be addressed in jury selection. Every single juror will be asked, 'did you see anything? Any news footage? Do you have any opinions, strong opinions, that you cannot set aside and decide this case based only on the evidence that you see introduced in the trial itself,'" he added.

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