McCarthy hands massive trove of Jan. 6 surveillance video to Tucker Carlson: report

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has turned over 41,000 hours of surveillance footage from the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol to Fox News primetime commentator Tucker Carlson, reported Axios on Monday.

"Carlson TV producers were on Capitol Hill last week to begin digging through the trove, which includes multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds. Excerpts will begin airing in the coming weeks," Axios reported.

"Now his shows — 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' on Fox News, and 'Tucker Carlson Today' and 'Tucker Carlson Originals' on the streaming service Fox Nation — have a massive trove of raw material."

Carlson told Axios, "[T]here was never any legitimate reason for this footage to remain secret. If there was ever a question that's in the public's interest to know, it's what actually happened on January 6. By definition, this video will reveal it. It's impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that."

In fact, noted Allen, much of this footage was already aired publicly by the House January 6 Committee during hearings.

Carlson has long downplayed the attack on the Capitol and the mob's assaults on police officers and threats against members of Congress, describing the event as merely "vandalism" and claiming January 6 defendants were being treated worse than murderers ahead of trial. In fact, a review last year found that only 15 percent of defendants were even held in jail, and were four times less likely to be held ahead of trial than the average federal defendant.

All of this comes amid a trove of new revelations from the defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems, revealing that Carlson in particular was fully aware that the "election fraud" lies that motivated January 6 rioters to the Capitol in the first place were baseless. In one text message to his producer, Carlson raged against former President Donald Trump's conspiracy theorists, saying, "We worked really hard to build what we have. Those f---ers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me."