A couple of weeks ago, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy handed over 41,000 hours of surveillance footage from the right-wing domestic terrorist assault on the U.S. Capitol to Tucker Carlson, who managed to find a few minutes of relatively calm moments to produce a ludicrous "look, no insurrection" report that ignored the fact that 140 officers were assaulted that day.
Today, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger sent an internal department memo that said, "Last night an opinion program aired commentary that was filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack. The program conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video. The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments," said the memo.
Manger also said Carlson's team didn't contact the U.S. Capitol Police "to provide accurate context."
From CNN:
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy granted Carlson access to more than 40,000 hours of the Capitol security footage from January 6. Carlson, who used the footage in an attempt to downplay the violence and defend the pro-Trump mob, claimed he checked with Capitol Police before airing the footage.
The Capitol Police has continuously warned that release of all security footage from the Capitol could pose a potential security risk for the building. CNN has reached out to Capitol Police for comment.
CNN and other news organizations have also requested access to the security footage. McCarthy's office said it is still working out the process to make the footage "more widely available" but did not comment further.
It's not surprising that Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host who has made a career out of spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories he knows are false, would try to downplay the severity of the January 6th insurrection. But it is even less surprising that the craven McCarthy would hand over sensitive footage to someone who has shown time and time again that he cannot be trusted to report the truth.
