With Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives in January, the Democrats certainly knew to expect that there would be some trouble coming for them. A reckoning of sorts after years of abuse at the hands of the then-liberal majority.
Perhaps one of the most obtuse manifestations of this abuse came to us during the early days of the January 6th select committee, when the Democratic chairs of the group refused to allow any of the GOP’s chosen lawmakers to participate, hand-picking a pair of staunch anti-Trump Republicans to claim “bipartisanship.”
BREAKING: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has given Tucker Carlson access to over 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from January 6th.
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) February 20, 2023
Now, as Kevin McCarthy looks to right some of the wrongs of the past several months, his decision to release a glut of footage from the January 6th riot has some Democrats shaking in their boots.
Members of the now-defunct January 6 Committee howled in protest as Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) reportedly gave Fox News host Tucker Carlson access to over 40,000 hours of footage of the Capitol riot.
The Committee, hand-picked by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for their hatred of former President Donald Trump, only released selected clips — and doctored the evidence to push their narrative of an “insurrection.”
After Axios reported that Carlson had been given the footage, committee members reacted in outrage — mostly singing from the same songsheet: namely, accusing Carlson, a skeptic of the Ukraine war, of being “pro-Putin.”
Former committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) — who opposed the certification of the 2004 election — said: “If Speaker McCarthy has indeed granted Tucker Carlson — a Fox host who routinely spreads misinformation and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s poisonous propaganda [sic] — and his producers access to this sensitive footage, he owes the American people an explanation of why he has done so and what steps he has taken to address the significant security concerns at stake.”
And that wasn’t all:
Rep. Adam Schiff The Bug-Eyed Bull-Sh**ting Bloviating Barrister Of Burbank (D-CA) — whom McCarthy removed from the House Intelligence Committee due to his pattern of selective and misleading leaks — also reacted in outrage. Like Thompson, he claimed that Carlson “spews Kremlin talking points”:
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who used false evidence as lead impeachment manager in Trump’s second trial in 2021, also echoed the claim that Carlson is a “pro-Putin journalist” — without presenting any evidence.
Of course, one has to imagine that having a fuller picture of the events of that day is in the national interest, which makes the Democrats’ objections all the more telling.
Cross-Posted With Liberty Hub
