WASHINGTON — It’s no mystery what Tucker Carlson will do with exclusive access to hours of surveillance footage starting January 6, 2021.
The Fox News host claimed earlier that video from the day showed a mob of Donald Trump supporters acting peacefully.
“You see people walking around and taking pictures,” Carlson said to millions of viewers in September 2021. “They don’t look like terrorists, they look like tourists, and they’re all Americans.”
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) recently gave Carlson an entire video archive from inside the Capitol, and there, the host. announced that the record was definitively confirmed previous view.
“These are not insurgents,” Carlson said. “He’s a tourist.”
That’s an untrue claim — and so far this week, McCarthy has tried to avoid saying he agrees.
“I don’t know what Tucker Carlson said,” McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday.
It’s hard to believe that McCarthy’s staff didn’t at least brief him on what Carlson was doing with all that video footage. It is more likely that McCarthy is familiar with the show but prefers not to discuss it, because those who do not agree with Carlson can anger the right-wing House Republicans who helped McCarthy win the speaker’s gavel.
On Wednesday, McCarthy declined to tell reporters whether he was familiar with Carlson’s recent broadcast that downplayed the Capitol attack. He ignored HuffPost’s question about whether he still considers January 6, 2021, a “violent uprising,” as he said last year.
More than 500 people have pleaded guilty to federal charges for what they did that day, including 60 who pleaded guilty to assaulting police. About 220 people have been sentenced to prison so far, according to the Justice Department.
Meanwhile, House Republicans are planning several counter-investigations into the federal response to the Capitol riots. CNN reported Tuesday that a panel of the House Administration Committee will launch two investigations: one into the security failures that led to the attack, and the other into a special ad-hoc committee investigating last year’s riots.
And members of the House Oversight Committee are ready to send DC prisons an official request for a tour of the facility where some January 6 suspects are being held awaiting trial.
“We will look at the situation in the jail,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a member of the committee, told HuffPost, adding she was concerned about “human rights abuses” in the chamber. famous facilities.
Greene has described the defendants of the Capitol riots as “political prisoners” and has repeatedly sought to draw attention to their plight. He told HuffPost that there were “a lot” of Jan. 6 defendants held in prison DC who have not been charged with violent crimes and who should have been released ahead of their trials.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which is overseeing the January 6 case, told HuffPost that as of Wednesday, about two dozen Capitol siege defendants were being held in pretrial custody.
“Almost all of these defendants were charged with assault and none were charged with misdemeanor offenses,” the spokesman said.
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the second-ranking Republican in the House after McCarthy, suggested investigating the prison would not be a top priority.
“I don’t know what it’s going to be — there are a number of different committees that are looking at some things that don’t just have to do with January 6th, and looking at some of these agencies that are abusing their powers,” Scalise said. HuffPost.
Like McCarthy, Scalise avoided saying he agreed with Carlson that the Capitol riots had indeed been peaceful, but praised McCarthy’s decision to release the material.
“The bottom line is finally transparency,” Scalise said.