After House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave Tucker Carlson exclusive access to sensitive Jan. 6 footage, the list of problems was not short. After all, this was an instance in which a Republican congressional leader helped a controversial television personality concoct a deceptive counter-narrative about the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
But there was another dimension to this that received less attention: the concerns of law enforcement.
Politico reported last month, for example, that McCarthy apparently chose not to coordinate with Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger and House Sergeant at Arms William McFarland before giving the Fox News host exclusive access. “Capitol Police have been extremely reluctant to share large swaths of their security footage, citing potential risks to lawmakers, aides and officers tasked with protecting the building,” the report added, referring to warnings that the House speaker apparently shrugged off.
Today, Politico moved the ball forward on this story quite a bit.
House Republicans ignored the Capitol Police’s repeated requests to review and approve any Jan. 6 security footage they planned to release publicly, the force’s top lawyer asserted in a sworn affidavit filed Friday.
My MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin spoke last week with Tim Heaphy, who was the lead investigator for the Jan. 6 committee, and who said in reference to the footage, “I’ve read that [Carlson’s team] said they ran some of the footage by Capitol Police and maybe took steps to blur some stuff. But I don’t know that that applies to all of it.”
It certainly did not. In fact, according to Politico’s report, which has been confirmed by NBC News, Carlson and his team were given access to thousands of hours of footage, and they ultimately aired roughly 40 clips, cherry-picked to advance their agenda. Of those 40, according to Capitol Police general counsel Thomas DiBiase, only one was previewed and approved beforehand.
The rest, DiBiase said in a sworn affidavit, “were never shown to me nor anyone else from the Capitol Police.” He’d emphasized that the Capitol Police wanted “to review every footage clip … if it was going to be made public.”
That request was not honored.
The Capitol Police general counsel went on to explain how the process unfolded behind the scenes, starting with a Republican request in early February to access the same footage that the bipartisan Jan. 6 panel was able to see. The Capitol Police quickly complied and installed three terminals in a House office building.
“At no time was I nor anyone else from the Capitol Police informed that anyone other than personnel from [the House Administration Committee] would be reviewing the camera footage,” DiBiase indicated.
Of course, we now know that McCarthy, who turned his Carlson gambit into a political fundraising opportunity, had other ideas.
All of this comes on the heels of U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger slamming Carlson for spreading “offensive and misleading conclusions” about the insurrectionist violence, adding some of the host’s on-air assertions were “outrageous and false.”
Earlier this week, the House speaker boasted that he and his GOP colleagues “back the blue.” What he neglected to mention is that this support is occasionally discarded when a controversial Fox News host asks for a favor.
