Two days after news broke that Fox News host Tucker Carlson received access to tens of thousands of hours of January 6 U.S. Capitol surveillance footage, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) opened up about why he made the disclosure. “I promised,” McCarthy told The New York Times on Wednesday. “I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”
The speaker said last month he was looking to release the tapes because of the “politicization” he believed had been fostered by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the January 6 Committee, which focused heavily on former President Donald Trump in its investigation and final report, but McCarthy did not divulge how he was planning to do so.
Axios first reported on Monday that McCarthy shared with Carlson 41,000 hours of surveillance footage from January 6, 2021, the day a crowd of people entered the U.S. Capitol, disrupting lawmakers who were meeting to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. A Fox News spokesperson told The Daily Wire that the report from Axios was accurate.
Hours later, Carlson said on his show, “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” that his team has been granted what they believe to be “unfettered” access to the tapes, and he plans to start sharing what they have found next week.
“Some of our smartest producers have been there looking at this stuff, trying to figure out what it means and how it contradicts, or not, the story that we’ve been told for more than two years,” Carlson said. “We think already that in some ways it does contradict that story.”
Some Republicans cheered the move, including Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who had opposed McCarthy’s bid for speaker earlier this year. “Thank you [McCarthy] for following through on this!” she tweeted Monday. “The public deserves to see everything that was hidden.”