House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), as part of his negotiations with conservative Republican holdouts to obtain that position, reportedly vowed to publicly release the tens of thousands of hours of surveillance camera footage from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot of 2021 that have largely been kept hidden to this day.
McCarthy has now begun to make good on that vow as he has reportedly granted Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive initial access to the voluminous footage of what occurred in the U.S. Capitol building on that fateful day, the Conservative Brief reported.
Until now, under the prior leadership of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), only an exceptionally small selection of cherry-picked video clips that supported the Democratic narrative of a Jan. 6 "insurrection" had been released for the public to see.
Axios reported on Monday that sources close to Speaker McCarthy had confirmed that Fox News' Carlson and his producers had been granted special access to review the roughly 41,000 hours of unreleased surveillance camera footage from an untold number of cameras all around and within the Capitol building and surrounding complex.
That process actually began quietly earlier this month, and it is expected that Carlson will soon begin to show some of the footage on his three programs -- Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News as well as Tucker Carlson Today and Tucker Carlson Originals on Fox Nation -- within the next few weeks.
"There was never any legitimate reason for this footage to remain secret," Carlson reportedly told Axios' Mike Allen. "If there was ever a question that's in the public's interest to know, it's what actually happened on January 6. By definition, this video will reveal it."
"It's impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that," the Fox host added.
Yet, while millions of conservative and independent Americans likely cheered at this move toward transparency with regard to what actually happened during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, there are indeed some House Democrats who are "bothered" by Speaker McCarthy's decision, especially those who sat on the decidedly biased and partisan House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 incident.
According to Mediaite, three top members of that now-disbanded committee -- former Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) -- have all decried McCarthy's move and took great exception to his choice of Tucker Carlson to review and release the previously undisclosed footage.
Thompson issued a statement that warned of the "potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly" and said Carlson "routinely spreads misinformation" and serves as a mouthpiece for Russian President Vladimir Putin's "poisonous propaganda."
Raskin accused McCarthy of "an astounding ethical collapse," demanded to know what sort of "security precautions were taken to keep this from becoming a roadmap for 2024 insurrection," and insisted that all of the footage should be made completely available at once -- even though he and the committee staunchly refused to do exactly that.
The Maryland congressman also separately in an MSNBC appearance accused Carlson of being a "pro-Putin" "propagandist" and, in light of the selective actions of his own committee with the security footage, hypocritically suggested that Carlson would "cherry-pick" footage that would "corroborate -- however he can -- their absurd conspiracy theories" about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Then there is the chronically dishonest Adam Schiff, who like his comrades accused Carlson in a tweet of being a "right-wing propagandist" who routinely "spews Kremlin talking points. Suggests Jan 6 was a false flag. And spreads the Big Lie" about alleged voter fraud during the 2020 election.
"Make no mistake: This isn’t about transparency, it’s about fueling dangerous conspiracy theories," the man who spent years falsely accusing former President Donald Trump of conspiring with Russia to fraudulently win the 2016 election added.
