According to recent reports, the January 6 committee has failed to provide the American public with a fair and accurate assessment of the Capitol incident that took place in 2021 prior to certifying Joe Biden as the then-President-elect.
Bennie Thompson, the committee’s chairman, admitted in a statement to CNN that the panel never analyzed the J6 footage aired by Fox News, which had not been previously viewed.
Thompson stated, “I’m not actually aware of any member of the committee who had access. We had a team of employees who kind of went through the video.” The January 6 investigation was expected to provide an impartial and precise account of the event, as it was commissioned by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Recently, Fox News was given access to nearly 41,000 hours of previously unreleased video footage taken in and around the Capitol on the day of the riot. Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired some of the footage on his Monday night show. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy provided Carlson’s team with the access to the footage and defended his decision to do so earlier this week.
When asked if he regretted giving Carlson access to the footage, McCarthy cited transparency as the main reason for doing so. “Each person can come up with their own conclusion [about the footage], but what I just want to make sure is I had transparency,” he added.
McCarthy criticized CNN’s coverage of the incident, stating that it had raised significant security concerns for lawmakers like himself in the past. He reiterated that his goal is to ensure transparency moving forward.
On his Monday night show, Carlson claimed that Americans had been “lied” to about at least some of the events of Jan. 6. He specifically called out members of the January 6 Committee for their dishonesty.
Carlson said, “If there’s one takeaway from the corpus of footage that we spent three weeks looking at, it’s that the January 6th committee lied. Its members are liars, and as the result of those lies, core civil liberties in this country were eroded, people went to prison. They’re in prison as of right now, unjustly. So those lies had consequences.”
Carlson also criticized the committee members who have gone on to pursue other positions, despite their dishonesty during the investigation.
“So you have to ask yourself, whatever happened to the members of the January 6th committee, these liars who hurt people and the country?” he added. “Well, let’s see, Adam Schiff is running for Senate. Adam Kinzinger got a job at CNN. Liz Cheney somehow wound up a professor at the University of Virginia, the august University of Virginia. They’re all still there. Benny Thompson. Ooh, listen to his wisdom. But they’re liars, and above all.”
Last month, McCarthy kept his promise to release the surveillance footage recorded during the Jan. 6 incident at the US Capitol. Axios co-founder Mike Allen reported that Carlson’s TV producers were on Capitol Hill last week to begin digging through the footage, which includes multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds. Excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks.
It appears that the January 6 committee has not delivered on its promise to provide an unbiased assessment of the Capitol riot. Fox News’ recent release of previously unreleased footage, and Tucker Carlson’s commentary on the matter, have shed new light on what actually happened that day. It remains to be seen how the American public will react to this new information and whether it will lead to any changes in policy or personnel.
WATCH the video below for more details:
Kevin McCarthy doesn’t regret giving Tucker the J6 footage:
“I said at the very beginning: transparency. What I wanted to produce for everyone was exactly what I said so people could look at it and see what went on that day.” pic.twitter.com/uYJHyWuhuv
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 8, 2023
Sources: ConservativeBrief, RedState, CharlieKirk, Axios