Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy can evidently smell the winds of populist political change in the GOP, as he drifted closer toward the MAGA wing of the party and vowed to release the tens of thousands of hours of Jan 6 tapes to the public during an interview with Breitbart News.
Breitbart reports that “McCarthy’s comments came during a wide-ranging hourlong on-camera interview in the ceremonial U.S. House speaker’s office in his first sit-down interview since Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired on his program some never-before-seen clips of such surveillance footage earlier this week.”
Speaker McCarthy’s pledge came during the interview when he was asked if he would give the public access to the tapes and said “yes.” He added, “We just want to make sure we go through them all, and it takes time. The first thing that Tucker said too, he didn’t want to show any exits to cause any problems. We asked the Capitol Police, ‘Were there any concerns?’ They came back with one, and we mitigated that, but it was interesting, that one that they had a problem with, Eric Swalwell had had up on the internet for the last two years showing that part.”
Speaker McCarthy was also asked why he decided to release the tapes. His response was somewhat surprising, as he seemed to care more about the idea of “transparency” than using the tapes to demolish the narrative pushed by Democrats and Never Trumpers, saying:
“Well this is all about transparency. It won’t just be to Tucker. Like any news organization, different people get exclusives. We watched during the January 6, CNN would have exclusives all the time and nobody complained. CNN actually got to be in Statuary Hall for a whole hour for their own show. You’ve watched that January 6 would release only certain tapes. I think it’s better for transparency that anyone can make their own decision up, and as we walk through these, these are many more hours of tapes than the January 6 committee told us. It’s not 14,000. It’s 42,000 hours.
“We want to make sure for security purposes our certain exits aren’t shown and others. But you know the most interesting thing, when I had the team talk to the Capitol Police about making sure they had no problems with the exit and so on, they said January 6 never asked them that. They showed the exit of the vice president. They showed the exit from my office. They literally had then Speaker Pelosi’s daughter showing the secure location that they take the leadership. That’s not supposed to be known to anybody, and CNN reported it, and I don’t remember the press ever getting upset with that. So what we want to do is make sure we have this out that everybody can see it.”
Regardless, Tucker used the tapes to demolish the leftist narrative. To his audience, Tucker explained that, “it does prove without a doubt that Democrats in Congress, assisted by Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, lied about what happened that day. They are liars. That is conclusive and that fact should prevent them from ever being taken seriously again.”
However, McCarthy did note that the narrative pushed by Kinzinger and Co. was obviously political. Explaining that, he said
“I haven’t been able to see all the tapes yet, but the one thing I did know, there were certain things that the January 6 committee did that I knew was purely political. First, not letting Republicans on the committee. Secondly, they made accusations that we knew were not true. They said one Republican congressman gave a tour. Well the tapes show he did not give a tour, but you know what, one of the Democrats on the January 6 committee did give a tour in the Capitol the day before. We watched different accusations they made. That’s why I think transparency answers all that. That’s not my job to sit back and say whether they were right or wrong, but my job is to be transparent and people can make their own conclusion.”
McCarthy then added that those being prosecuted for their activities on Jan 6 should be able to use the tapes, saying “anybody’s that’s been held for trial, they should be able to have the ability to see the tapes,. They should be able to use the tapes. I don’t know if he [Chansley] was able to use the tapes during then, but I also believe in America you need equal justice. I watched what transpired in America, the burning of courthouses. Look, I don’t condone anything that happened on January 6. I don’t like what happened on January 6, but I watched the courthouses get burned in Seattle. I watched them attack federal employees. I watched what happened here, and no one getting arrested, no one being held up to justice. I think in America you want equal justice, and that’s what’s concerning to me.”
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