Washington
CNN
—
House Republican leadership did not let the US Capitol Police force review most clips of the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol that were given to Fox News host Tucker Carlson and made public, USCP attorney Tad DiBiase said Friday.
DiBiase told a federal judge he reviewed just one clip – which was previously available for public viewing – before Carlson aired dozens of clips that he had received from House Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
“The other approximately 40 clips, which were not from the Sensitive List, were never shown to me nor anyone else from the Capitol Police,” DiBiase wrote in a sworn affidavit submitted in an alleged Capitol rioter’s criminal case.
Carlson has aired carefully selected clips to portray the pro-Trump mob as peaceful patriots. The Fox News host falsely claimed that the footage provided “conclusive” evidence that Democrats and the House select committee that investigated January 6 lied to Americans about the day’s events.
According to the Justice Department, 140 officers were assaulted at the Capitol that day, including 60 Metropolitan Police officers and 80 US Capitol Police officers.
DiBiase said Friday that his team gave the Republicans on the Committee on House Administration access to their CCTV footage from January 6, 2021, but weren’t asked ahead of time if the clips could then be shared with Fox News.
The Capitol Police have expressed concern for months that some of the CCTV footage is sensitive, and, if shared publicly, could be a security risk. But McCarthy hasn’t backed off his decision, telling CNN on Friday that the police force only raised objection to one clip and that it was addressed.
“We went to Capitol Police. We asked them, ‘Do you have any concerns with any of these, with any time period?’ They brought up one, which was only the one they had concerns with. We changed it,” McCarthy said without offering further details.
Carlson, for his part, has said he takes security concerns “seriously” and previously claimed that he had Capitol Police review the footage before airing it. Multiple sources on Capitol Hill, however, previously told CNN that Carlson’s show provided only one clip to review and not the others.
US Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said earlier this month that Carlson selected favorable clips to mislead his audience about the attack. Manger called Carlson’s depictions of the events “offensive.”
“The program conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video,” Manger wrote in an internal department memo obtained by CNN. “The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.”
Manger added that Carlson’s show didn’t reach out to the police department “to provide accurate context.”
