When House Speaker Kevin McCarthy followed through on his promise to release Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 riot, it seemed like an obvious bid to appease his most vocal critics on the right.
But, miraculously, it’s had the opposite effect.
McCarthy achieved a rare feat with his decision to hand over 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from Jan. 6: He managed to piss off just about everyone—Democrats, Republicans, even the ultra-conservative allies of former President Donald Trump.
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The left, naturally, is enraged. They argue the release threatens to reveal sensitive security details about the Capitol, including the placement of cameras, evacuation routes, and floor layouts. But more surprising has been the far right’s reaction. They’re mad McCarthy didn’t release the footage to the public immediately, instead only granting access to Fox News, for now.
Now, not even two months into his speakership, McCarthy is once again doing a sort of damage control, potentially reversing himself again, saying Tuesday that he’d hand over footage to defendants on trial for storming the Capitol. While that could placate some of McCarthy’s detractors, the decision also threatens to make things worse with others—while also not being enough for the most diehard Republicans.
The drama all started last week, when Axios reported that McCarthy had granted Fox News kingpin Tucker Carlson exclusive access to more than 40,000 hours of security footage from the day of the attack. “There was never any legitimate reason for this footage to remain secret,” Carlson told Axios at the time.
The release of the footage was a flashpoint in the contentious race for House Speaker. McCarthy was urged by the ultra-MAGA wing of his conference to make the tapes public. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA, who’d become an unexpected ally of the California congressman), was among the loudest voices in that chorus. And when McCarthy announced that he’d hand over the footage to Carlson, she relished the victory.
“We are releasing the J6 tapes and not one single lying grifter on social media had anything to do with it,” she said. “I told you we would all along.”
But quickly after news about McCarthy sharing the footage with Carlson spread, the speaker’s critics pounced.
Longtime Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani called the decision from McCarthy a “terrible mistake,” which gave rise to an “issue that doesn’t have to exist.” Newsmax TV host Eric Bolling echoed that sentiment, questioning why other conservative news outlets—such as his Fox News rival—weren’t given the same red-carpet treatment as Carlson.
“Why not other media? Why not Newsmax? Why did he just give one host, on one cable network, this information?” Bolling complained.
Trump-ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said “Lindell TV”—his media firm—had sent an official request to McCarthy and Congress to release the tapes last week. He has yet to file a lawsuit, but pledged to take legal action against McCarthy if Lindell TV was not given all the tapes and access that Carlson was issued.
“I have a request sent out," Lindell told The Daily Beast. “It’s all of our right,” before adding that CNN and The Daily Beast should have access to the tapes, too.
“All of us have that right to that 44,000 hours of video,” he said, while suggesting Fox News would “filter out whatever would benefit them.”
Democrats on the Hill quickly voiced their anger. In a letter to his colleagues, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said the footage being released to Carlson “poses grave security risks to members of Congress and everyone who works on Capitol Hill.”
Other lawmakers expressed similar concerns.
“I'm so horrified by that,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) said Monday night of the release to Carlson. “And I'm horrified by how much danger the Speaker of the House is putting us all in… it's really a dereliction of duty.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who served on the Jan. 6 Select Committee, told The Daily Beast that the Jan. 6 Committee handled that footage with “great care.”
“We had many staff members go through thousands and thousands of hours in search of the truth, so we could develop a coherent picture of what happened and share it with the world,” he said. ”Now, Speaker McCarthy has, in one way or another, turned all of it over to one media entity with one particular propagandistic mind.”
Noah Bookbinder, president of the ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The Daily Beast there were serious ethics concerns to be had with the release, including regarding the decision to only hand the tapes to Carlson.
“It is very different for a speaker or any member to say, you know, I'm gonna give you an exclusive look at legislation that I've drafted or, or something like that, as opposed to security footage, which is highly sensitive, which is not something that was created by Speaker McCarthy,” Bookbinder said.
A number of news organizations have also explicitly asked for the same access Fox News is being granted.
With such an uproar, McCarthy now seems to be trying to redirect the narrative. He’s now making clear that while the footage—for now—is being released to Fox News exclusively, he plans to release it to everyone at some unidentified point.
“I think putting it out all to the American public, you can see the truth, see exactly what transpired that day,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday. “My intention is to release it to everyone.”
McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment on his timeline for releasing the footage to the public, or what specific procedures would be put in place to ensure sensitive security details would not be released.
But Politico also revealed on Tuesday that McCarthy has already authorized Jan. 6 defendants to have access to Capitol footage on a case-by-case basis, in an effort led by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA). Loudermilk has framed the sharing of footage as an issue of due process—insisting the Capitol footage can be crucial evidence for defendants hoping to disprove their charges. (Loudermilk was the Republican who took a group of rallygoers on a tour, on the eve of Jan. 6, through the Capitol complex and allowed them to take pictures of entrances and exits, as well as magnetometers—a no-no on Capitol Hill.)
Jan. 6 lawyer Joseph McBride confirmed news of the footage sharing with defendants to The Daily Beast, adding that he believes everyone should have access to the tapes. McBride sat on the fence when asked about Jan. 6 organizer Ali Alexander’s claim that releasing the footage would “harm” defendants charged over their actions that day. “Could January 6 defendants at large, you know, suffer some kind of consequence for releasing the footage? I suppose so. Could they be exonerated by footage...I suppose so,” he said.
Raskin, for one, questioned the merits of this footage for defendants.
“If one of the convicted defendants believes that there is going to be evidence that antifa was really behind this, and this somehow would exonerate them, then, you know, that is a dream they can have, but I wouldn't hold out much hope of that particular outcome,” he said.
According to a source familiar with the Jan. 6 Select Committee’s work, sifting through Jan. 6 footage took months and involved ongoing discussions about what footage could be used without revealing private information about the Capitol complex. Footage had to be viewed in a specific room and with a Capitol Police-approved setup.
Carlson and his team of producers do not have unfettered access to the footage. They are apparently confined to viewing the materials from a terminal in McCarthy’s office. But that also raises its own set of journalistic questions.
To be sure, McCarthy has supporters in his handling of the release. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who’s been a bit of a rebel within the Republican conference this term, tweeted that she’s “not sure why both sides of the aisle wouldn’t want every minute of the J6 video footage unfiltered, not redacted, for all to access.”
“Sunlight is the best medicine,” she said.
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SC), another McCarthy ally, told The Daily Beast that McCarthy is “making good” on his commitment to release the footage, though he recognized there are some “legitimate concerns that people have raised about security issues.”
“But you look at the January 6 committee released the footage of Mike Pence and his exit route out of the Capitol. That, to me, would have been the most sensitive piece of security information,” Johnson said.
Other Republicans seem mostly indifferent about the decision. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), another Republican who’s openly criticized party leadership in recent years, wasn’t particularly concerned with the release of footage to Carlson—and eventually the public.
“I don’t know. Why not?” he told The Daily Beast Tuesday.
As for security concerns from Democrats in particular, Crenshaw said he hadn’t heard their issues. “I think it's fine,” he said.
One of the main concerns is that, with more than 40,000 hours of footage, it’s anyone’s guess what is released and packaged to the public. Carlson—as he’s consistently done—could downplay the attack by only publishing select snippets of the tapes.
Democrats seem to think that’s the overall reasoning for handing over the Jan. 6 tapes to someone like Carlson.
But still, even if Carlson manages to achieve that goal and effectively softens the attack on the Capitol, it’s still unlikely to be enough for the most hard core GOP voices.
“Marjorie’s boo Kevin McCarthy is still sitting on J6 footage. And now, Barry Loudermilk is assisting Kevin McCarthy in preventing the release of all of the J6 footage,” far-right radio host Stew Peters told The Daily Beast late Tuesday. “He and Marjorie are now complicit in holding up justice for these political prisoners. Release the footage now.”
