WASHINGTON – The U.S. Capitol Police Chief sharply criticized Fox News’ highly misleading report on the severity of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
“Last night, the opinion program aired comments filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attacks,” Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger wrote in the department’s newsletter on Tuesday.
In a major escalation of the Republican Party’s efforts to rewrite history today, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) granted Fox host Tucker Carlson hours of security camera footage of the riots.
After supposedly reviewing the material, Carlson claimed the quiet cutscenes better depicted the day’s events than the footage of rioters fighting the police.
“They are peaceful,” Carlson said of the pro-Trump crowd. “They are orderly and gentle. These are not rebels. They are tourists.”
Carlson never contacted police for context, Manger said in a memo.
“The program was easily picked out from the quieter moments of the 41,000 hours of video,” Manger wrote. “These comments fail to provide context for the chaos and violence that occurred before or during this less tense period.”
Several Republicans blasted Carlson’s false portrayal of the unrest. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took the unusual step of blaming Fox News, the Republican Party’s biggest partner in the media, and said it was linked to Manger’s letter, which he held up for camera at a news conference.
More than 500 rioters have pleaded guilty to federal charges for their actions that day, which was inspired by Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. Federal prosecutors have charged more than 300 people with assaulting or harassing police, and Trump remains under investigation for trying to overturn the election.
Carlson claims the video shows officers acting as “tour guides” for shirtless rioter Jacob Chansley, also known as the “QAnon Shaman,” who famously stood from the Senate rostrum wearing a fur hat with horns.
Manger dismissed the allegations of false tour guides and pointed out that the crowd outnumbered the police. “The officers did their best to use de-escalation tactics to try to talk the rioters into leaving the building,” Manger said.
Carlson’s “most disturbing” accusation, Manger said, is that Officer Brian Sicknick was “healthy and vigorous” after the rioters attacked him with pepper spray, noting that Sicknick’s death had nothing to do with the day’s events. The DC medical examiner said Sicknick died of natural causes, a stroke.
Manger said the department maintains, “as any common sense person would, that if Officer Sicknick had not fought valiantly for several hours while he was brutally attacked, Officer Sicknick would not have died tomorrow.”
Sicknick’s family, meanwhile, issued a statement call Fox News sleazy and dishonesty.