House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (DN.Y.) said Sunday that he has “no indication” that police have reviewed the Jan. 6, 2021, footage that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) shared with the Fox host News, Tucker Carlson. .
McCarthy defended his decision to give Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of surveillance footage from the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, saying he took steps to ensure lawmakers’ safety was not compromised.
But Jeffries said there were no signs the video had been screened by authorities.
“It’s still not clear to me if any material record that any news personality on another network might have been verified, but it has to be verified before anything is released into the public domain,” Jeffries told the State of the Union CNN.
McCarthy said Carlson pledged not to post “any exits” used by lawmakers and Capitol staff, but did not specify what he did to ensure the safety of lawmakers and staff would not be jeopardized by the release of the material.
“There are serious security concerns about the release of public domain footage at a time when political violence is on the rise and there are people, including the former president, who are fanning the flames of extremism,” he told the Democratic leader.
Carlson, an ally of former President Donald Trump who has spread conspiracy theories about January 6 and condemned the work of the House committee investigating the insurrection, he said he would start streaming the material this week.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) strongly condemned McCarthy’s action in a letter to Senate colleagues last month, saying it made the job of Capitol police officers more difficult.
“It also risks exposing carefully crafted and closely watched government continuity plans designed to preserve our democracy in the event of an attack,” Schumer wrote. “I would like to learn all the things that would harm our country.”
Meanwhile, private statements by Fox News personalities are highlighted in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the conservative cable network.
A message from Carlson, released in a court filing, shows he believed Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell had lied about the election, but continued to support his false claims. In another message to colleagues Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, Carlson called for a Fox News reporter to be fired over a tweet that verified a Trump post.
Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch testified in a court filing that some anchors “endorsed” the 2020 election lies and “wish they had been stronger in calling it out in hindsight.”
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