Did the FBI Tamper with the Frame Rate of the Jan 6 Pipe Bomb Footage?

November 2, 2022 James Fetzerblog

REVOLVER EXCLUSIVE

More than a year has passed since the FBI last released footage of the pipe bomber who allegedly planted explosive devices near the DNC and RNC party headquarters the night before January 6, 2021.

The FBI has reportedly collected 39,000 video files relating to the suspect’s identity, according to Steven D’Antuono, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington D.C. Field Office. Yet since September 8, 2021, not a single new video file has been released.

At Revolver, we have been focused on the two clips of video footage from DNC building security cameras that the FBI released on March 2021 and September 2021, respectively.

In August 2022, we definitively proved the DNC camera footage from the FBI’s September 2021 release should have captured the “money shot” of the pipe bomber taking the bomb out of the bag and planting it near a park bench in front of the DNC building. But for some reason, the FBI censored the tape so that the public could not see the alleged criminal walk back into the camera frame to commit the actual criminal act.

Over the past two months, we took a closer look at the DNC surveillance footage the FBI provided to the public. What we found was even more bizarre, and more damning than our initial discovery that the FBI is withholding critical footage of the pipe bomber actually planting the bomb.

The original “missing moneyshot” – reflecting the FBI’s deliberate censorship of the commission of the crime, effectively – is a red flag of such stunning proportions that it alone merits Congressional investigation under a GOP-led House commission on FBI malfeasance.

The new findings we are about to discuss, however, are so implausible, specific, and suspicious that we are compelled to demand that a future GOP-led commission subpoena and demand the exact chain of custody for the DNC surveillance tapes that the FBI released to the public

In this piece, we will analyze problems with a basic technical feature of the DNC video called the “frame rate.” For the convenience of the reader, we put together a short video that sketches the argument to follow:

Implausibly Low Frame Rate Suggests Possible Tampering

In our analysis of the DNC location surveillance footage provided by the FBI, we observed that the frame rate in the footage is so low that it barely exceeds 1 frame per second. We’ll explain the significance of this shortly, but first let’s cut straight to the factual findings.

Below, we show the final 13 seconds of the DNC security camera footage from the FBI’s September 2021 release. These are the 13 seconds during which the pipe bomber gets up from the DNC park bench and walks directly toward and past the security camera.

There are only 16 distinct frames in these 13 seconds, yielding an average frame rate of just 1.2 frames per second. This is so low that it is essentially “stop motion.”

See for yourself:

What Is Frame Rate and Why Does It Matter?

Video has a “motion” look because a series of still pictures — or “frames” — scroll on screen so many times per second that individual frames are not discernible to the human eye, thus creating the appearance of fluid, real-life motion.

For example, a “flipbook” makes still pictures turn suddenly into a “motion picture”  when the still pictures are simply flipped through quickly:

In the video above, the flipbook moves at about 12 frames per second (fps). The average industry frame rate for most CCTV security cameras currently in use is about 15 frames per second. Modern security cameras are typically 30 fps and higher-end ones shoot 60 fps footage. Some very old dinosaur security cameras on decades-old systems shoot at around 8 fps.

The reason for the variation in fps is the trade-off between video quality and storage cost. The higher the frame rate, the larger the file size, and more storage is needed for the larger sizes, and storing all that data costs money.

So there is a fairly wide variation in security camera frame rate depending on one’s budget. But even at the absolute lowest end, you simply don’t see surveillance cameras operating at 1 fps.

The frame rate for camera footage has gotten much faster since the early days of cameras. For example, the Apollo moon landing for Apollo 16 in 1972 was shot on the moon with a 12 fps camera setting — 12 frames or distinct pictures per second.

HD footage in the modern era is now often shot at 120 fps. But security cameras, which record all day, face the aforementioned trade-off in storage size and don’t need all the extra frills of a super high-quality video.

At the same time, advancements in storage space efficiencies over the past 20 years have made it very cheap and easy to capture genuine motion at the 8-10 fps level, so institutions don’t even get cost savings anymore for “stick figure” stop motion cameras at or near 1fps like they did back in the 1980s.

For example, vendors showing off security camera frame rate comparisons on the market today tend to show a high end of 60 fps and low end of 8 fps.

As this helpful guide explains, the reason that no one uses “1 fps” security camera footage anymore is because when the surveillance camera only records one frame per second, one has to get extremely lucky to capture a clean shot of a suspect’s face looking at the camera — the suspect has to look right into the camera it for a full second, and practically say “cheese.”

This severe inadequacy helps to explain why 1fps surveillance cameras are an ancient figment of a bygone era decades ago when recording space on a camera was once expensive, and before technology and market changes two decades ago made storage space extremely cheap and better frame rates the industry standard.

Simply put — you don’t see 1 frame per second security cameras anymore in 2022. You can’t even buy anything on Amazon where 1 fps is the default or anywhere remotely close to a standard or recommended output.  In fact, a comprehensive 2021 study on surveillance footage frame rates found that 0% — that’s right, 0% — of surveillance cameras had a frame-rate below 5 fps.

This raises the strange and troubling question. Why does the security footage the FBI released from the DNC national headquarters depicting the alleged pipe bomber register at barely over 1 frame per second? Keep in mind, this implausibly low 1 frame per second surveillance footage is from the same camera from which Revolver proved in August that the FBI is withholding critical footage from the public of the pipe bomber actually planting the bomb.

READ MORE — Release the Tape: Revolver Has Definitive Proof FBI Is Hiding Critical Footage of Jan 6 “Pipe Bomber”

Did the FBI tamper with the tape in addition to withholding critical footage? Let’s dig a bit deeper.

An Unlikely Story

The DNC headquarters building is the national headquarters of one of the two major political parties in America. A lot of very important people work there and visit on a regular basis. The Vice President-elect of the United States herself, Kamala Harris, traveled to the DNC headquarters building the morning of January 6, 2021.

The historically minded will immediately recall call that it was the break-in at the DNC headquarters (then at Watergate) nearly 50 years ago that launched the greatest political scandal in American history.

For such an important place, with such important people, it is bizarre that the DNC security team was content with Jurassic Era surveillance footage at 1fps.

And keep in mind, this is Washington, D.C., the city that was once the murder capital of the country. Street crime around downtown DC, one would think, would be a concern to the DNC as a general matter, well outside the purview of VIP visits.

Heck, DNC staffer Seth Rich was, we are told, a victim of such street crime.

Given this context, can we really believe that the DNC national headquarters would have security cameras whose frame rate quality pales in comparison to old cameras at an average McDonald’s?

In fact, we know the DNC building takes security seriously, and precisely at the spot where the piper planted the bomb, at the precise pipe bomb crime scene covered by the 1 frame per second camera in question.

As demonstrated in our Google Earth walkthrough last month, the DNC cared enough about security in the park bench area that they employed what appears to be full-time security during the day looking straight out at the bomb site (photo below is from October 2018, per Google Earth)

Considering all of the factors above, including the DNC’s extra physical security at the exact spot the pipe bomb was allegedly planted, it is beyond odd and indeed downright suspicious that their surveillance footage would not only be poor, but at a 1 frame per second frame rate so poor as to be statistically impossible. Remember, the latest 2021 study on frame rates found that the number of currently operational surveillance cameras with a frame rate of less than 5 fps was statistically zero.

To underscore the difference between frame rate of surveillance cameras at the Democrat National Committee Headquarters building, and that of cameras at your typical gas station or fast food establishment, Revolver put together the following amusing video:

It is important to remember that it is the exact same security camera that Revolver already proved captured footage –footage inexplicably withheld from the public by the FBI — of the the pipe bomber planting (or not planting) the bomb device that has had its footage somehow nuked back into the Stone Age with a 1 fps frame rate.

That is, we already know the FBI censored that exact tape and cut out the critical moment that would have depicted the pipe bomber planting the bomb. The question now is, beyond censoring the tape, did the FBI or their proxies tamper with it too? Did the FBI or proxies artificially degrade the version of the DNC surveillance tape they released to the public in order to make it more difficult to identify features (such as the face or the phone fidgeting) of the alleged pipe bomber?

Remember — two years on, the FBI still hasn’t even told us the gender of the suspect. They have told us bupkis about the alleged MAGA terrorist who walked around the apex heart of Capitol Hill, on foot, for more than an hour, making cell phone calls, touching surfaces, and depositing physical devices.

The award the FBI set for the public to identify the pipe bomber — $100,000 — is ten times less than the award they offered Christopher Steele for dirt on President Trump. That tells you where their priorities are, and where they aren’t.

It is painfully obvious the FBI does not want to identify the pipe bomber. And because the pipe bomber is almost assuredly a government asset of some sort, the FBI doesn’t want civilians to be able to make out the suspect’s identity either.