After Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired Capitol surveillance footage this week exposing yet more falsehood from the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 and leaving Democrats and their media allies irate, the committee chair on Wednesday said the panel never actually analyzed the crucial footage.
On Monday’s edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Fox News aired the footage of the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, undermining the select committee’s narrative of a “deadly insurrection.” Given access to the video by Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Carlson’s team reviewed over 40,000 hours of footage, which offered proof the committee manipulated audio and video to dramatize the riot for its made-for-TV hearings in an election year.
But in a Wednesday night statement to CNN, select committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., claimed the panel never analyzed the blockbuster footage Fox News aired this week.
“I’m not actually aware of any member of the committee who had access,” Thompson said. “We had a team of employees who kind of went through the video.”
Hiring investigators who “kind of went through the video” doesn’t sound like a very thorough investigation.
However, Thompson’s admission that his committee lacked due diligence makes no sense. Since when do lawmakers have no access to the same material as their own staffers? Did none of the nine panel members view the footage that was played for the cameras? Does Thompson not know who had access to the tapes? Was it just the former television executives they hired to produce their show trials? Either Thompson is lying and knows exactly who had access, or he handed the key to Vice Chair Liz Cheney and had nothing to do with it while the committee leaked exclusives to CNN.
Thompson’s office did not immediately respond to The Federalist’s inquiries.
