According to Axios, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Fox News (Paul Ryan) and Tucker Carlson access to the 41,000 hours of CCTV footage.
Presumably Speaker McCarthy figures this approach will support his previous promise to release and “make public” the full unedited House footage. I’m not sure I would qualify this as fulfilling the pledge. Why is an intermediary needed? Why not just release the footage and let people review it raw and unfiltered?
Via Axios – House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Fox News’ Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 riot, McCarthy sources tell me.
- Carlson TV producers were on Capitol Hill last week to begin digging through the trove, which includes multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds. Excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks.
Why it matters: Carlson has repeatedly questioned official accounts of 1/6, downplaying the insurrection as “vandalism.”
- Now his shows — “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News, and “Tucker Carlson Today” and “Tucker Carlson Originals” on the streaming service Fox Nation — have a massive trove of raw material.
Carlson told me: “[T]here was never any legitimate reason for this footage to remain secret.”
- “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.” (link)
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There could be an entirely appropriate reason for doing it this way, but that has not yet been explained.
