A key Republican lawmaker said Fox News’ Tucker Carlson doesn’t have unrestricted access to tens of thousands of hours of Jan. 6 Capitol footage, said a Republican lawmaker, coming after it was confirmed that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) handed the footage to him.
“It’s basically controlled access to be able to view tapes. Can’t record, can’t take anything with you,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), the chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, told The Hill Tuesday, adding that his panel is working with the House sergeant-at-arms and Capitol Police. “Then they will request any particular clips that—that they may need, and then we’ll make sure that there’s nothing sensitive, nothing classified—you know, escape routes.”
Elaborating, Loudermilk told CBS News that Carlson’s staff “may request any particular clips they may need, then we’ll make sure there’s nothing sensitive, nothing classified, including escape routes … we don’t want al-Qaeda to know certain things.”
While both McCarthy and Carlson have confirmed the move, few details about the agreement were provided. Other mainstream outlets have asked McCarthy to provide them with the footage.
Loudermilk said that those news outlets and the public would ultimately get access to the tapes. “Hopefully sooner rather than later, but I think we’re talking about weeks to months,” he told CBS.
A group of outlets—Advance Publications, ABC News, Axios, CBS News, CNN, Scripps, Gannett, the Los Angeles Times, Politico, and ProPublica—wrote a letter to McCarthy and other congressional leaders to grant access to the footage.
“Without full public access to the complete historical record, there is concern that an ideologically-based narrative of an already polarizing event will take hold in the public consciousness, with destabilizing risks to the legitimacy of Congress, the Capitol Police, and the various federal investigations and prosecutions of January 6 crimes,” attorney Charles Tobin wrote on behalf the media outlets last week.
