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Schumer: McCarthy endangering lawmakers by giving Carlson Jan. 6 footage

February 22, 2023 at 5:04 p.m. EST
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) sent out a fundraising email Wednesday touting his giving the Jan. 6 riot footage to Tucker Carlson. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
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Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) of jeopardizing lawmakers’ security by handing Fox News host Tucker Carlson hours of footage from the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

In a “Dear Colleague” letter sent to lawmakers on Wednesday, Schumer said McCarthy is “needlessly exposing the Capitol complex to one of the worst security risks since 9/11” by sharing the footage with Carlson.

“The footage Speaker McCarthy is making available to Fox News is a treasure trove of closely held information about how the Capitol complex is protected and its public release would compromise the safety of the Legislative Branch and allow those who want to commit another attack to learn how Congress is safeguarded,” Schumer said.

On Monday, Carlson revealed that McCarthy granted him and his producers “unfettered” access to hours of security video recorded when hundreds of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol to stop the confirmation of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.

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In a fundraising appeal on Wednesday, McCarthy told supporters he gave Carlson access to 44,000 hours of footage of the insurrection. Five people died as a result of the attack, and 140 members of law enforcement were injured as the mob used flagpoles, bear spray, baseball bats and other weapons against police.

In his letter, Schumer describes the footage as “highly sensitive” and says McCarthy’s disclosure of it “poses grave security risks to members of Congress and everyone who works on Capitol Hill.”

“Releasing security footage publicly reveals the location of security cameras across the Capitol grounds, making it harder and more dangerous for our brave Capitol police officers to do their job,” the Democratic senator said. “It also risks exposing the carefully laid out and highly guarded plans for the continuity of government, intended to preserve our democracy in the event of an attack.”

The Senate, Schumer added, “strongly objects to the release of this sensitive security footage to Tucker Carlson and Fox News.”

“The speaker — nor any elected official — does not have the right to jeopardize the safety of senators nor Senate and Capitol staff for their own political purposes,” Schumer said. “Period. Full stop.”

In the fundraising email, McCarthy said he gave Carlson access to the footage to fulfill a campaign promise he made ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

“Patriot, you deserve the facts — all of the facts,” the fundraising appeal begins. “I promised I would give you the truth regarding January 6th, and now I am delivering. I have released the full 44,000 hours of uncut camera surveillance footage.”

McCarthy gave Carlson exclusive access to the footage. .

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The speaker — who has not spoken publicly or responded to questions about the release — has said that Republicans would investigate the work of the bipartisan House select committee that, during the last Congress, was tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. McCarthy also has vowed that Republicans would launch their own inquiry into “why the Capitol complex was not secure” that day.

In the fundraising appeal, McCarthy claimed he gave the footage to Carlson because it is “in the public interest to know everything that happened that day — not just the narrative that [former House speaker Nancy] Pelosi’s partisan committee wanted you to see ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.”

Carlson, Fox News’s most-watched prime-time host, has repeatedly cast doubt on official accounts of what happened on Jan. 6 that were shared last year by the House select committee. Instead, he has repeated baseless theories that the federal government instigated the attack and has blasted the committee, even giving airtime to former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon hours after he had been convicted of contempt. Carlson produced a three-part documentary, “Patriot Purge,” advancing a false claim that FBI operatives were behind the assault and arguing that the Jan. 6 rioters were innocent.

In his letter Wednesday, Schumer said that by “handpicking Tucker Carlson, Speaker McCarthy laid bare that this sham is simply about pandering to MAGA election deniers, not the truth.” MAGA is an acronym of Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan — “Make America Great Again.”

“Tucker Carlson has no fidelity to the truth or facts and has used his platform to promote the Big Lie, distort reality, and espouse bogus conspiracy theories about January 6,” Schumer said. “If the past is any indication, Tucker Carlson will select only clips that he can use to twist the facts to sow doubt of what happened on January 6 and feed into the propaganda he’s already put on Fox News’ air.” Some Democrats and Trump critics call the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump through voter fraud the “big lie.”

Carlson said Monday that his producers would spend the rest of the week assessing the video and air what they found next week. (U.S. Capitol Police previously said they shared 14,000 hours of footage with the House select committee.)

“So there’s about 44,000 hours, and we have — you may have read today — been granted access to that. … We believe we have secured the right to see whatever we want to see,” Carlson said. “Some of our smartest producers have been looking at this stuff and trying to figure out what it means and how it contradicts or not the story we’ve been told for more than two years. We think already in some ways that it does contradict that story.”

The bipartisan House committee conducted live, televised public hearings in 2022 and more than 1,000 interviews during its investigation. After its 18-month examination of the insurrection ended, the panel unanimously agreed to refer criminal charges against Trump and some of his allies to the Justice Department, recommending that prosecutors pursue four charges against Trump: obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the United States, inciting or assisting an insurrection and conspiracy to make a false statement.

McCarthy’s decision to provide Carlson with the video also drew rebukes from others over the security risks of handing over footage that could contain information about the Capitol complex’s security apparatus.

Tim Mulvey, a former senior staff member and spokesman for the Jan. 6 committee, said in a statement Tuesday that when the panel obtained access to Capitol Police video footage, “it was treated with great sensitivity given concerns about the security of lawmakers, staff, and the Capitol complex. Access was limited to members and a small handful of investigators and senior staff, and the public use of any footage was coordinated in advance with Capitol Police. It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were used irresponsibly.”

Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), who sat on the select committee, called Carlson a “propagandist” on Wednesday and said McCarthy’s efforts are futile, arguing that Americans know Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“America knows Trump’s mob assaulted Congress, chanted ‘hang Mike Pence,’ and nearly toppled our election,” Raskin said in a tweet. “Can Putin’s PR team work a Stalinist rewrite?”

Meryl Kornfield and Jacqueline Alemany contributed to this report.