Internal GOP battle breaks out after Kevin McCarthy refuses to make all Jan. 6 footage public

Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) handed over 44,000 hours of camera footage from the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to fired Fox host Tucker Carlson. The move prompted many on both sides to ask why McCarthy refused to allow the public to see all of the footage for themselves.

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) is now joining the effort for greater transparency. Writing for MSNBC.com, Ja'han Jones explained that it's the beginning of an internal battle cooking among the GOP.

It is part of an ongoing debate within the Republican Party about which conspiracy theory to use for Jan. 6. One is that the attackers were all Antifa. Another is that the FBI agents caused Trump supporters to storm the Capitol. A different one is that the event never happened at all, and it was possibly even a false flag.

New York Times Magazine reporter Robert Draper told CNN on Sunday that the conspiracy confusion was on full display in the fake hearing that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) hed in a dark, windowless room somewhere on Capitol Hill.

"It was like being in an upside-down world," said Draper of the mock-hearing. "And also, Jim, their narratives shapeshift, you know, even within a matter of seconds. Either the Jan. 6th — what took place there was basically peaceful, or it was violent but an Antifa kind of violence, or it was set up by the FBI, thus a feds problem. Basically, their point of view is that they are politically persecuted. There is a two-tier system of justice, but it's not the well-off whites versus people of color. It's the ruling class versus Trump supporters."

Speaking on the right-wing podcast "The Benny Show," Higgins said Thursday that he's demanding the footage be released. He quoted the quantity at closer to 60,000 hours of footage, meaning Carlson didn't get a considerable chunk of it.

“I’m one of the ones pushing for the release, by the way, of all the J6 video," Higgins said. "We got 60,000 hours of video from Jan. 4, 5 and 6 — I want it all released to the American people so that we can crowdsource that investigation."

He goes on to allege that the videos have "FBI fingerprints all over it," claiming that they staged the attack.

“I’m not falling for ... this story that I’m even hearing from some of my colleagues — that the release of all that video will somehow endanger the Capitol or members of Congress. That's crazy, man," Higgins also said, according to Jones.

"McCarthy has refused to fork over the footage to other news outlets despite vowing to do so (perhaps because Carlson’s attempt at revisionism was widely seen as a dud and harmful to the GOP)," Jones explained. "Several outlets are suing to pry the footage loose from the federal government — and Higgins’ remarks on Thursday show he’s an unlikely ally on that front, albeit for self-serving reasons."

Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said she wanted to release the footage but didn't want the internet sleuths to have the ability to search through it and find criminal behavior. The footage has already been turned over to law enforcement, however, who got a head start on searching for the identities of people in those videos.

"Republicans should have taken the 'be careful what you ask for' phrase to heart," closed Jones. They've whipped the conservative movement into a conspiratorial frenzy as far as Jan. 6 tapes are concerned. Now, they're being pushed to uphold their promise, even if doing so seems likely to hurt their own party."

See the full column at MSNBC.com.