Remember all the incessant demands by the liberal media for the security camera video footage of the Capitol ever since January 6, 2021? No? Perhaps because it never happened... until now. On the heels of the new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy turning over 40,000 hours of that video to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the liberal media suddenly has an urgent desire to see those videos right away.
On Friday, Scott MacFarlane of CBS News wrote of this newfound urgency by the liberal media to look at those videos, "Media organizations demand Jan. 6 videos McCarthy shared with Fox News."
A group of media organizations, including CBS News, is demanding access to a tranche of surveillance and police videos from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol that U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy provided to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
In a letter to congressional leadership Friday, the media companies argue the footage McCarthy allowed Carlson and Fox News to access should be made available to other media groups.
The letter was sent on behalf of CBS News, CNN, Politico, ProPublica ABC, Axios, Advance, Scripps, the Los Angeles Times, and Gannett.
And how many of this group demanded access to that video before now? Perhaps somewhere between nil and none. They were along for a cozy ride with Nancy Pelosi. That's what makes the next passage so comical:
"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," wrote attorney Charles Tobin.
Translation: They need access to those tapes primarily to try to construct a narrative to counter what the public might see with its own "lying eyes" via Tucker Carlson.
In a statement, the U.S. Capitol Police chief said, "When Congressional Leadership or Congressional Oversight Committees ask for things like this, we must give it to them."
So why did it take until now for the Congressional Leadership and Oversight Committees to ask for the video? You would think that the January 6 Committee to be a wee bit curious as to what the security cameras recorded.
A similar media coalition successfully sought release of some Justice Department video court exhibits in Jan. 6 prosecutions, including police body camera footage and surveillance video that shows the violence and attacks directed at police. Hours of footage, which was submitted to or shown in open court in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, has been regularly shared with the media coalition. The footage has helped prosecutors secure hundreds of guilty pleas and partial or full convictions in nearly every jury trial in U.S. Capitol cases.
Yes, the liberal media relied on cherry-picked videos that the Justice Department used in their prosecutions, but avoided asking for the full 40,000 hours of video from January 6. Suddenly they now want access to all that video, primarily to counter what Tucker Carlson might report about it.
