Twitter and Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday blasted the Jan. 6 committee in light of newly released surveillance video of the Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Besides misleading the public, they withheld evidence for partisan political reasons that sent people to prison for far more serious crimes than they committed,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Tuesday, referring to the House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
Besides misleading the public, they withheld evidence for partisan political reasons that sent people to prison for far more serious crimes than they committed.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 7, 2023
That is deeply wrong, legally and morally.
“That is deeply wrong, legally and morally,” Musk said.
Musk, an avid Twitter user with 130 million followers, wrote in response to a part of the footage that was aired on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, which were released to the Fox News host by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). It adds to the world’s richest person’s ongoing criticisms of the federal government under the Biden administration, which included disapproving of his “Build Back Better” agenda and calling the Democratic Party the party of “hatred.”
Among the most high-profile revelation in these tapes was a clip showing Capitol Police officers walking alongside Jacob Chansley, a Jan. 6 defendant serving a 41-month sentence after pleading guilty to an obstruction charge. Chansley was unarmed and walked past several Capitol police officers.
“This is crazy. The public was misled,” Musk wrote in another post, replying to footage showing Chansley walking beside police officers in the building.
In his Monday program, Carlson said lawmakers were “lying” about the events of Jan. 6, which he said were less violent than they actually are. He noted how the tape shows Chansley to be walking around the Capitol without being arrested and later questioned the narrative that officer Sicknick died of a head injury.
“This tape overturns the single most powerful and politically useful lie that Democrats told us about January 6th,” Carlson said Monday.
The Select Jan. 6 committee, which consists of two Republicans and seven Democrats, was established in the House of Representatives on July 1, 2021. It interviewed a thousand people, including former officials of the Trump administration, in investigating what it describes as an “insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021, when protesters protested in and around the Capitol building in objection to the result of the 2020 presidential election.
By Gary Bai
