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The chief of the U.S. Capitol Police took another verbal swipe at former Fox News host Tucker Carlson during testimony before a Senate subcommittee on Thursday.
Chief J. Thomas Manger doubled down and ripped the former top-rated Fox News host for his reporting on the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol Building.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) asked Manger about Carlson’s utilization of the January 6 footage in his March 6 program covering the events of that day during a budget hearing held by the Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch of the Senate Committee on Appropriations.
“In, I think, February or early March of this year, Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy authorized the release of more than 40,000 hours of security footage from the awful events of January 6,” Van Hollen said.
“He released them to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who then used them to create a false narrative surrounding the events of that day, concluding that the attack on the Capitol was quote, ‘mostly peaceful chaos,’ and that, ‘The footage does not show an insurrection or riot in progress.’”
After noting that Carlson was taken off the air this week by Fox News, Van Hollen claimed, “But a lot of the damage has been done,” before asking: “Can you talk about the impact this false narrative has had on the men and women who work for you?”
Manger responded: “When he did that program, I put out a message to all of my employees, and I talked to them about the narrative that he tried to put forth, how disrespectful it was to the men and women of the Capitol Police. And I think what was fortunate is that that narrative that Mr. Carlson tried to put out had no legs. I think most folks understood exactly what it was, and so I think that was very gratifying to the members of the Capitol Police to see that.”
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“I appreciate that. And I agree with you that despite his best efforts, the American public understood exactly what happened on that day and that it was not the narrative that he put out,” Van Hollen said in response, according to The Epoch Times.
Carlson’s team was given access to some 41,000 hours of previously undisclosed video footage taken in and around the U.S. Capitol on the day of the riot. McCarthy, who provided Carlson’s team the access, defended his decision to do so in February.
“Do you regret giving him this footage so he could whitewash the events of that day?” one reporter asked the California Republican.
McCarthy responded by citing “transparency” as a major reason why he gave Fox News first access.
“I said at the very beginning – transparency. And so what I want to produce for everybody is exactly what I said, that people can actually look at it and see what’s gone on that day,” McCarthy noted.
“Each person can come up with their own conclusion [about the footage], but what I just want to make sure is I had transparency,” he added.
McCarthy took specific aim at CNN for its coverage, which he said had raised significant security concerns for lawmakers like himself in the past. He reiterated that his goal is to ensure transparency moving forward.
Kevin McCarthy doesn't regret giving Tucker the J6 footage:
"I said at the very beginning: transparency. What I wanted to produce for everyone was exactly what I said so people could look at it and see what went on that day." pic.twitter.com/uYJHyWuhuv
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 8, 2023
Carlson said during his show that Americans had been “lied” to about at least some of the events of Jan. 6, and he called out specific members of the January 6 Committee in particular.
“If there’s one takeaway from the corpus of footage that we spent three weeks looking at, it’s that the January 6th committee lied,” he said. “Its members are liars, and as the result of those lies, core civil liberties in this country were eroded, people went to prison. They’re in prison as of right now, unjustly. So those lies had consequences.
“So you have to ask yourself, whatever happened to the members of the January 6th committee, these liars who hurt people and the country?” he added. “Well, let’s see, Adam Schiff is running for Senate. Adam Kinzinger got a job at CNN. Liz Cheney somehow wound up a professor at the University of Virginia, the august University of Virginia. They’re all still there. Benny Thompson. Ooh, listen to his wisdom. But they’re liars, and above all,” he added.
