According to reports, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the House Speaker, offered Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson 41,000 hours of the exclusive U.S. Capitol security footage from the Jan. 6 incident. Carlson may start airing the much-awaited release on his shows in the weeks ahead.
Carlson’s TV producers reportedly started sorting through the tape last week on Capitol Hill, according to an Axios story citing sources.
Carlson told Axios that “there was never any justification for this footage to stay concealed. What truly occurred on January 6 is the only question that is relevant to the general public.”
The U.S. Capitol was invaded by a crowd on January 6, 2021, preventing Congress from certifying President Biden’s win in the 2020 election. According to earlier reports, Capitol Police’s cameras around and in the building recorded over 14,000 hours of video between midday and 8 p.m. that day. However, according to Axios, there are around 30,000 more hours of video.
“By definition, this film will make it clear,” stated Carlson. “I can’t imagine why any decent person would be disturbed by that,” said the speaker.
Despite granting access to the archive to Democratic-controlled congressional committees, law enforcement, as well as others, Capitol Police had issued a warning that lawyers for Jan. 6 defendants shouldn’t be provided the footage without “protections in place to stop its dissemination and copy,” which alarmed gov’t officials and raised concerns about national security.
The Jan. 6 Committee delivered its last report last month, recommending charges against former Pres. Donald Trump, and started disclosing dozens of witness documents after nearly a year and a half of probes and hearings that included some security video tapes. Kevin McCarthy was one of the several Republicans in the House who were recommended for ethics charges by the Jan. 6 Committee after they disobeyed its subpoenas.
McCarthy declared last month that he will work to have the U.S. Capitol surveillance tape from that terrible day published.
The House Speaker attacked the Jan. 6 Committees final report, claiming it was “crafted for a political basis,” telling reporters that the American people “should see” what transpired.
McCarthy responded, “We are looking through that. I want to think things over carefully. But I am committed to doing that.”
The failures of the House Democratic leadership and Capitol authorities, according to House Republicans Rodney Davis (R-IL), Jim Banks (R-IN), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Troy Nehls (R-TX), and Kelly Armstrong (GOP-ND), left the complex vulnerable. Their findings are detailed in a 141-pages of investigative reports that was published independently last month.
The report “uncovers the partisanship, ineptitude, and apathy that contributed to the disaster on January 6 and highlights the leading part Speaker Pelosi as well as her office had in the security fiasco at the Capitol,” according to Banks, the effort’s leader.
Asserting D.C., has “a government of secrecy and lying” and that the Capitol riot was “a complete outbreak of mob violence, a forgettably little epidemic by recent standards,” Carlson has long fought for the release of the video.
