Tucker Carlson now has the equivalent of nearly five years of surveillance footage captured by U.S. Capitol Police security cameras on January 6, 2021. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) turned over the tapes to the Fox News host earlier this month, according to Axios. Carlson’s producers and researchers are already distilling the footage; the first round of clips is expected to air in a few weeks.
While some grumble that McCarthy did not fulfill his promise to publicly release the footage—arguably a valid complaint—Carlson’s team undoubtedly will give the massive trove much-needed context and maximum impact. Carlson released a three-part documentary, “Patriot Purge,” in November 2021 that explained how the events of January 6 helped launch a second “war on terror” against American citizens out of step with the Biden regime.
Since early 2021, Carlson has used his nightly show to expose the cruel treatment of Trump supporters suffering pretrial detention orders; raised questions about the use of undercover assets including FBI informants and the mysterious role of Ray Epps; asked why the case of the January 5 “pipe bomber” remains unsolved; and demanded the release of the surveillance video as late as last month.
Releasing the video never should have been a political fight; after all, the footage was recorded on a taxpayer-paid closed circuit television system installed on public property to monitor public employees. Contrary to arguments by Capitol Police and the Justice Department, the video belongs to the public, not federal agencies.
But both entities, with the help of D.C. District Court judges, have successfully kept the trove largely under wraps for more than two years. Even the FBI and D.C. Metropolitan Police departments signed agreements a few days after the Capitol protest to acknowledge that the tapes technically belonged to Capitol Police.
In a sworn statement filed in March 2021, Thomas DiBiase, general counsel for the Capitol Police, insisted the footage constituted “security information” that required very limited access. “Our concern is that providing unfettered access to hours of extremely sensitive information to defendants who already have shown a desire to interfere with the democratic process will . . . [be] passed on to those who might wish to attack the Capitol again,” DiBiase warned.
The Justice Department subsequently designated the tapes as “highly sensitive” government material subject to protective orders in January 6 prosecutions. It’s been a major battle for defendants and their attorneys to properly access all of the video tied to their cases; defendants cannot watch any clips without the presence of a legal authority and none of the footage can be shared or downloaded.
Of course, there have been some exceptions. Capitol Police shared cherry-picked clips with the House Democrats on the second impeachment committee as well as the January 6 select committee. For example, the brief clip of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) running through a hallway that afternoon presumably after the breach was produced from surveillance video. HBO also accessed surveillance footage for its slanted documentary on January 6. “Security” concerns, my foot.
Imagine the universal outrage in any other situation had crucial video of what the government considered a terror attack been kept away from the public for more than two years. Influential opinion pages would have banged the drum incessantly for its release, insisting some sort of cover up was unfolding. Progressive activist groups and elected officials would demand a full accounting of what happened before, during, and after the “attack,” including all government-produced evidence. Influential lawyers and legal defense funds would lament the deprivation of due process for those involved in the allegedly heinous act.
Instead, the usual defenders of accountability, transparency, and constitutional rights have been completely AWOL. The fight has been waged by outmatched defense attorneys in the rigged legal and judicial system in the nation’s capital. And a handful of influencers like Carlson.
To be fair, a consortium called the Press Coalition forced a few federal judges to lift protective orders on a small amount of surveillance video. Representing more than a dozen major news companies, the coalition successfully won the release of limited security footage that, in some instances, contradicted the assertion that police did not allow protesters into the building that afternoon. Unsealed video also showed how police brutalized women inside the lower west terrace tunnel.
In a laughable “reality check” in his article, Axios reporter Mike Allen suggested the public has seen enough surveillance video since the “Jan. 6 committee played numerous excerpts of the footage at last year’s captivating hearings.” But not only were most of the evidentiary video clips sourced from protesters’ cell phones, the surveillance video clips offered by the committee represented an infinitesimal sliver of the total collection.
Which, notably, is much bigger than what the government has made available to January 6 defendants. Axios reported that Carlson’s team has 41,000 hours of raw footage—nearly three times the amount that the Justice Department allowed into evidence, which only covered the time period between noon and 8:00 p.m. on January 6. The tapes now in Carlson’s possession apparently covers the entire 24-hour period from “multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds.”
One can only guess what the videos will reveal. It’s possible, even likely, the never-before-seen footage will show the elements of a preplanned attack engineered by the same political and government forces that attempted to destroy Donald Trump for the better part of six years. Will the tapes finally answer the questions that top law enforcement officials such as FBI Director Christopher Wray refuse to answer and the January 6 select committee buried—not the least of which was the role of the FBI?
Withholding the video is only one part of the massive cover-up about January 6. Republicans should seek similar demands for records, emails, and communications from Capitol Police to expose the full scope of the cover-up. But like all good political scandals, the path to the truth begins with the tapes.
Steven Brizel says
These tapes which Pelosi. never wanted to be shown will shed much light on the darkness dispelled by the Kangaroo Court and Stalinist show trial
Steve Chavez says
IMAGINE WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF TRUMP HAD WON!
The Entire Capitol Hill, Smithsonian, White House, and cities across America, WOULD STILL BE IN FLAMES with the matches and gasoline given to the Peaceful Protesters by members of the J6 Committee, the entire Democratic Party, and paid for by Soros & Obama Inc..
ALL MAGA’S would be attacked, not hired or fired, given the worst grades, even expelled or intimidated with fear of retaliation.
AN EPOCH TIMES reporter was inside the building and her focus was drawn to JOHN SULLIVAN, who was pushing the crowd to break the doors down and encouraging them to break windows. Her suspicion led to another man who turned out was Sullivan’s partner. He documented both.
SULLIVAN then walks out of the building and is suspicious grabbed up by an NBC reporter who interviewed him. ALL THE MSM WAS CALLING IT “AN INSURRECTION” as if they got an advanced text, meaning advance notice that a breach was going to take place by outsiders and talking points needed to be coordinated.
IS SULLIVAN IN PRISON? If not…. why not!
David Ray says
Also take note that the BLM scumbag John Earle Sullivan was open calling (yelling) for the place to burn. Unfortunately for the little prick, MAGA don’t commit arson.
AntiFa & BLM commit arson ad nauseum; not Trump supporters. (One example is when AntiFa tried to burn down the Hatfield Courthouse with people barred inside.)
It’s also worth noting that businesses only felt safe from riots when the grifting retard “won” the election.
They took down the plywood from their stores, supremely confident that Trump supporters had no interest in attacking their buildings.
Teri Davis says
This is what I’ve seen on 100’s of posts! Trump supporters videoed JOHN SULLIVAN breaking the front window where he and his followers entered! I think in legal terms that’s breaking and entering! Yes he’s a confirmed BLM member out of UT! I’m sure they were there for TRUMP LOL. He was arrested but amazingly was released the next day!
Christopher Riddle says
WELL SAID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CowboyUp says
People were prosecuted for touching the sign ray epps threw at the cops, but not ray. Says a lot.
Steve Chavez says
The Democratic Party went after Trump for using the word FIGHT!
FOOTBALL COACH: “You need to get out there and FIGHT. This is the Championship Game!”
CHEERLEADERS: “FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!”
The teams come onto the field and immediately start FIGHTING. The Cheerleaders join them. It was a real Cat Fight!
Media Interviews a player: “The Coach and Cheerleaders were screaming at us to FIGHT!”
I was hoping someone would have read my comments on several sites with a video to be played in the impeachment and J6 hearings of COACHES and CHEERLEADERS using FIGHT! Trump didn’t mean to go to FIGHT!
David Ray says
What’s important is who initiated the whole thing. The footage showing the entire ellipsis will show complacent Trump supporters being just that – complacent.
Then it’ll show them being fired on without cause for HALF AN HOUR. With the aid of FBI plants dressed up as Trump supporters (along with AntiFa also dressed up in MAGA gear), the under seige patriots were finally baited inside the Rotunda.
We might also get the money-shot of the fake pipe-bomber that the DC security was uninterested in releasing.
Someone placing explosive ordinance should have earned top priority . . . unless he was part of the set-up.
Richard Terrell says
I am really conflicted about Trump. He has been the object of so much hate and dishonesty that it is appalling to contemplate it. Yet, he seems to trash everybody in sight who is not sycophantically supportive of him, which could disable attempts to restore some integrity to our institutions. The Biden Administration has. got. to. go!
Gz7 says
The people he trashes deserve it. And, Trump knows how to use it. Did you forget how he got the nomination?
Skip says
I hope the Agent provacateurs are tracked where and when they moved around, who they contacted when, especially the Scaffold Commander who to my knowledge has not been identified positively and Ray Epps who seems to have directed the barriers to be taken down before the President Trump speech ended.
The capital police actions that were unjustified, such as tear gas and flash bombs as well as personal beatings of Ralliers.
David Ray says
Leftists deserve it and more.
His petulant accosting of DeSantis is getting on my nerves. (Mark 9:40 “for he that is not against us, is on our part”)
DeSantis is certainly on our part.
I’m hoping Trump will return to more of when he visited Puerto Rico after the hurricane & recently at East Palestine.
Edie Boudreau says
I understand where you are coming from, as I too prefer that he turn his anger against Dems and Deep State that have caused so much damage to his reputation and his life! However, most of his competitors are in it for their careers, and not for the people, as Trump has proven to be. He is a fighter, and thank God he is, otherwise he would never have won in the first place. He had to fight against the other candidates during his 2016 campaign, and those who want to run against him this time may dilute the Republican vote so much that Democrats win the 2024. That, and the lack of integrity in the voting process. Look at McConnell and how he prevented the Senate from getting a majority because he backed the RINOs instead of the Conservative candidates, just because he doesn’t like Trump. Trump did an amazing job as President. He had so many accomplishments, including keeping all his promises. If he would choose Ron DeSantis as his Vice President nominee, they would be unbeatable. All we would have to do is to stop the fraud perpetrated by the Dems and the Deep State.
Mo de Profit says
They’ve had two YEARS to manipulate the digital files, they are not tapes.
I sincerely hope that Tucker does start exposing the truth behind the Biden tyranny but those people have languished in solitary confinement without trial for more than two years in the freest nation in the world.
Ooh look, food shortages.
Stephen Triesch says
The argument that releasing the tapes poses some kind of security threat is nonsense. All areas of the Capital are routinely accessed by hundreds of federal employees, contractors, lobbyists, and service people. Some areas are normally open to the general public. Moreover, the Capitol building is only one of hundreds – probably thousands – of potential targets of terrorism. If it is deemed secure, terrorists will either find another target or – as on 9/11 – escalate their plans to horrific proportions.
There is something – maybe a lot of things – on those tapes that they don’t want us to see, and they don’t want us to see these things because they will shred the narrative that we have been sold for the last two years. The J6 Committee was not an honest attempt to understand the events of that day, but to pursue a pre-determined conclusion in order to destroy Donald Trump and the populist movement he led.
David Ray says
You make a valid point.
Withholding video is what scheming leftists do to enable their lies.
An example:
A.G. Keith Ellison denied the video of George Floyd BEFORE he was constrained on the pavement. It showed a completely different picture.
He was already saying he couldn’t breathe while treated so gently, I thought the cops were gonna give him a foot massage.
It shows the scumbag was already in “excited delirium” due to his overdosing on fentanyl. (Overdosing on fentanyl doesn’t exactly pop on camera.)
Vic says
He leads!
45 will be 47!
Walter Sieruk says
What about the human rights of the person murdered in cold blood by the name of Ashli Babbitt ?
On January 6th 2021 at Washington DC the patriots were waved in that government building by the Capital police. What a setup. That was totally unconscionable of those politically correct fiendish villains.
It’s been discovered and proven that the Capital police officer had viciously shot dead Ashli Babbitt thorough a closed then she was not engaging in any type of violence and the Capital officer who shot her was a Black man which is part of the cover up. Later that murderous Capital officer was “cleared” as in he escaped punishment because of the heinous influence and power in those politically correct leftist in the US government. So that awful man literally got away with murder.
That murderous escaped justice. This country is no longer a nation of “Justice for all”
The point in mentioning that is to think of a the national politically correct outrage and even riots that would occur if a White Capital police officer had shot dead a BLM rioter , for any reason ,no matter how valid that reason was.
Walter Sieruk says
That despicable fiendish villain who is posing as a real US President ,Joe Biden ,who is so extremely evil that he takes a large part in a heinous cover-up in the blatant murder of Ashli Babbitt, a non-violent ,unarmed peaceful patriot protestor who shot and murdered , though a closed door by a US Capital “police officer..” The words “police officer” referring to murderous character, who viciously killed Ashil in cold blood. After she and other American patriots had actually been waved in that Federal government building by some “Capital police officers” . That was a real, actual “set up” in the most horrendous, wicked insidious kind there could possibly be.
Then Biden after he officially entered the Office of the US Presidency abused that power as a Chief Executive to hide that grisly murder of this young patriot from the public, the ,law courts , and helped get that murderous off with total impunity.
This among other hideous unconscionable affront by Joe Biden reveals now more than ever before
that Biden is not a genuine US President but an actual criminal.
Walter Sieruk says
This among other hideous unconscionable affront by Joe Biden reveals now more than ever before
that Biden is not a genuine US President but an actual criminal.
The ancient Roman statesman lawyer scholar and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero had very wisely wrote that “Law is built on justice; where there’s no justice there’s no law.”
So there no genuine law in American anymore because that despicable malicious vicious murderer. Michael Byrd , had escaped the punishment that he truly deserves for his malicious deadly shooting of the unarmed ,peaceful , non -hostile Ashli Babbitt.
With that sinister and insidious politically correct far left- wing in power in the United States is country is. now lawless.
Jeff Bargholz says
I like Cicero. I like Marcus Aurelius too.
Walter Sieruk says
It’s no wonder or surprise that the American patriots who are the political prisoners of the Biden regime have asked to be transferred to the Guantanamo bay prison camp. They are desperate to have their human rights abused and violated in the Biden Gulag.
As absurd reality is that the violent and murderous jihadists at Gitmo are treated much better by being given good food and clean cells with working plumbing good medical care and little to no solitary confinement likewise the guards at Gitmo for forbidden to beat those dangerous and deadly jihadists.
In contrast, for the non-violent American patriots who had been falsely arrested in that schemed leftist set up on January 6, 2021 are not given their US Constitutional rights or ant human rights. There’s more than enough proof that and many first hand reports about the many malicious beating inflected by vicious leftist brutes in uniforms , the prison guards, in Biden’s gulag as well as their being denied medical care .
It gets worse, those the patriots are kept 23 hours alone in single dark moldy cells to not working plumbing, and this means not even a working toilet. They are also given little food and the little they do receive is of very poor quality. In other words the food very rancid and outright is terrible.
Mo de Profit says
Just like the German concentration camps.
Jeff Bargholz says
Yes but those were actually death camps.
American made says
It’s time to act now
Christopher Riddle says
Without McCarthy’s release od the Complete Footaga,all we were going to be allowed to see was an”Edited Version”that supported Their NARRATIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Massimo Doto says
Hope Mr. Carlson has backed up his materials, and 24/7 security to ensure that neither he or the tapes will be “disappeared”.