Alarms raised as McCarthy gives Tucker Carlson access to January 6 footage

The hard-right host said his team was spending the week at the Capitol, preparing to reveal their findings.

Granting exclusive access to January 6 security footage to such a deeply partisan figure is a highly unusual move, seen by some critics as essentially outsourcing House oversight to a TV personality who has promoted conspiracy theories about the attack.

Images and videos from the Capitol attack have been widely circulated by documentarians, news organizations and rioters themselves. But officials have held back much of the surveillance video that offers a detailed view of the grisly scene and brutal beatings of police.

The House committee investigating the January 6 attack worked with US Capitol police to review and release segments of the footage as part of public hearings last year.

Carlson, who produced a documentary suggesting the federal government used the Capitol attack as a pretext to persecute conservatives, confirmed that his team was reviewing the footage.

The January 6 committee, which was disbanded once Republicans took the House, created a secure room for staff to examine more than 14,000 hours of footage. The process took months, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

Any clip the committee wanted to use had to be approved by Capitol police. If police had an objection, the committee would engage in negotiations to redact any content that could potentially endanger the force or its protection of the Capitol.

Capitol police reported an increase in threats to member safety over the last several years. The number of possible threats against members of Congress rose from about 4,000 in 2017 to more than 9,600 in 2021, then declined last year to 7,501.

Others said the two situations are not comparable, as countless hours of footage have been released from many sources.