Kevin McCarthy has decided to entrust the investigation into the events of January 6 to everyone's favorite TV lunatic:
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has provided exclusive access to a trove of U.S. Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has played down the deadly violence that occurred that day and claimed it was a “false flag” operation....“So there’s about 44,000 hours, and we have — you may have read today — been granted access to that. … We believe we have secured the right to see whatever we want to see.”
....McCarthy told reporters last month that he supported the idea of additional footage from the riot being made public. “I think the public should see what has happened on that,” he said.
If McCarthy really wanted the public to see what happened, he would open up the videotape archive for anyone to view or download. But that's obviously not what he wants. What he wants is to give it to someone he can trust to find every possible tidbit that can be twisted into a partisan hammer.
I expect this technique to catch on. It's what Elon Musk did when he turned over Twitter's internal emails to a person he trusted to mine them for anything that could be made to serve his anti-liberal ends. The point was ideological, but it was also a great way to ensure that a ton of chaff would get tossed into the air and divert everyone's attention for weeks or months.
This didn't work out so well for Musk because the stuff produced by Matt Taibbi and others was such obvious BS that everyone stopped paying attention pretty quickly. The Capitol surveillance video might work out better because (a) Tucker Carlson is more experienced in political smeardom than Taibbi, and (b) fuzzy, grainy video is a lot easier to manipulate than words on a page. See that guy in the background? That's the Senate bathroom door. Why did he go in there? Here's what I think....
Anyway, there are treasure troves of stuff all over the place that no one feels like combing through for years on end. So why not turn them over to partisan nutballs who are willing to comb through them? It can't hurt, and you never know what they might come up with.
All that said, can I add: wtf? Since when does a federal employee get to turn over a vast amount of valuable government information to one specific favored person for political ends? Am I losing my marbles, or is this not as corrupt as it looks like?
Am I losing my marbles, or is this not as corrupt as it looks like?
It's obviously corrupt. The better question is, why the hell is doing this legal?
If a prominent Republican does it, it’s legal. I would think by now, after…
[gestures at everything that’s happened from January 2017 through today, including the ongoing theft of classified documents and refusal to return them when specifically asked]
…everyone would realize this is self-evident amongst law enforcement, regulatory agencies and judicial officials.
Start making more money weekly. This is valuable part time work for everyone. The best part ,work from the comfort of your house and get paid from $10k-$20k each week . Start today and have your first cash at the end of this week. Visit this article
for more details.. https://createmaxwealth.blogspot.com
Imagine if Tip O'Neill gave exclusive access to, say, Walter Cronkite. Yup, still corrupt.
The only way it would appear more corrupt is if we learned this via a whistleblower, if it'd been hush-hush instead of announced openly.
That wouldn't have been nearly as bad - Cronkite was a mainstream journalist and not a partisan bomb-thrower like Carlson.
Why does Kevin McCarthy have control over this, doesn't the Senate have anything to say?
It was a House investigation which is likely why the Senate isn’t involved.
FOIA, anyone?
This has to be in the public domain, um, right?
either it is or it isn't, meaning either everyone has a right to it or no one does. charlie mccarthy can't pick who gets and who doesn't. ain't in his job description, especially when releasing some of it might have implications for the security of the capitol and those who work there.
(heh) "Charlie McCarthy". I saw what you did. Of course, the audience here is ancient enough to get the reference.
FOIA takes time. And any footage would have to be reviewed to make sure classified information is/was not inadvertently revealed.
Tucker Carlson's clearance is . . . what, exactly? If they want to claim that any of it is classified, they're going to have to investigate McCarthy for divulging it.
The bigger problem is that the FOIA doesn't apply to Congress.
Otherwise, he's violating 14A.
"We believe we have secured the right to see whatever we want to see.”
Fascinating Freudian slip from old Tucky.
There is no way whatsoever to describe this as anything other than corrupt. Not to mention making whatever comes out of the Tucker machine unworthy of any news coverage whatsoever. Total abuse of the government processes. Republicans regularly freak out over things only 1% this corrupt. Anybody at National Review or whatever (much less the Glem Greenwalds of the world) who runs with whatever Tucker spits out deserve nothing but unending scorn and disrespect.
I'd definitely love to know under what authority mccarthy released this, and what rules govern the video and other investigation data. i assume he'll say that as speaker he can do whatever he wants because it was a house investigation that subpoenaed all the video, but anyone know if that's true? Are there no rules about national security that would limit his actions?
That is pretty much true.
So let's start the countdown to Tucker Carlson selectively editing it down to just poor innocent protestors wrapped in American flags crying from pepper spray, people getting punched by cap police with no context and a frame by frame viewing of Ashley Babbitt slowly dying.
Who cares about a few videos when we just witnessed Joe Biden travel to Kyiv to pick up his payoff from the most corrupt country in the world! IN PLAIN SIGHT!!!
That, in all seriousness, is a comment being posted on right-wing websites today.
Unless a penis pops up on the video, nobody is going to change their priors based on anything Fox News does with the video. About 60-70% will think an attempted insurrection occurred on Jan 6, 2021 and the remaining 30-40% will insist they were just lost tourists. Unfortunately, the 30-40% will be disproportionately living in the parts of the country that Founding Fathers deemed should have default electoral control over how government operates for approx the last 2.5 centuries.
Carlson's mission is obvious: "find" antifa-provocateurs. That was a claim by people defending Trump shortly after Jan6. With all that footage there's going to be some scruffy characters that look like they are antifa, Carlson will say they are, and that will be enough for the audience.
But his target audience already believes it; they've believed it for two years. So it's not apparent how either he or Republicans will benefit from it.
Well, that half-naked painted guy in the furs and horn hat is clearly a lib. Hey! He even says he's some kind of VEGAN! Just dub in some Black Lives Matter, or Defund the Police bellowing, and SHAZZAM! History changes.
Take it to the SCOTUS. Kav and Clarence will fix it!
McKevin?
Tucker Carlson is more experienced in political smeardom than Taibbi
Not really. Taibbi's been a hack smear artist for decades, too.
I work in security. Just handing out all of the footage from a large facility for an entire random day, let alone one with a riot, is an unbelievable breach of security. Someone watching that video could find the blind spots in the camera coverage. They could learn other things about the security set up, such as the amount of traffic different areas get and how often they're patrolled. They become aware of the quality of the video footage. They can gather which parts of the facility the security prioritizes.
It's just a phenomenally stupid thing to do. I'd get fired immediately if I did anything like it. I suspect that Kevin McCarthy has the authority to release whatever he wants, but it's beyond stupid.
^^This!!
Invaluable intel for the next mob of Capitol insurrectionists.
How naive. You write as if Barely Speaker McCarthy and Republicans revealing flaws and blind spots in Capitol security to slavering platoons of brownshirted fascist street thugs was a bug and not a feature.
The J6 tapes should have been released to the public long before now. So sorry that McCarthy gave them to Tucker. Nancy Pelosi had over two years to make the footage public. I admit I would not have been pleased if she had given it to Rachel Maddow, but at least that would have been a start.
No, they shouldn’t. Read TheMelancholyDonkey’s comment just preceding yours.
I’m all in favor of divorce from the right wing nut jobs. It’s Impractical and impossible but highly desirable. Why do I want to associate myself in any way with them? I don’t. I wish there were a way to accomplish this. It’s clear that the United States of America is not United at all.
This is just one more example. We get these every day from Fox and the republicans. I think it’s time for liberals to reevaluate their agenda. It makes no sense to build up these “red states” or rural areas. It make no sense to give them a penny of our tax money. You can’t live with people who hate you. You can’t negotiate with them or compromise with them. You can only lose to them.
Just a reminder that ''red' states contain a lot of Democrats and others who oppose Republican policies but don't have the political power to defend themselves. Also, talking about restricting the distribution of "our tax money" is a two-edged sword; DeSantis and Abbott, for example, would love that kind of power.
Justin is a fairly toxic commentor--his schtick is to decry Republican wrongdoing, but then conclude with (feigned?) world-weariness that the only thing that can be done is give up and/or actively work towards the Republican goals he ostensibly dislikes.
Just when you think Qevin McCarthy can't get any stupider, he does. It's hard to keep up, much less anticipate.
This would be a good time for a Democrat to go to the well of the House and demand a vote on the Speaker.