'Equal justice': McCarthy skates around question of whether he learned anything from Jan. 6 footage

12 March 2023

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (D-CA) was unable to answer whether he learned anything from the thousands of hours of January 6 footage he recently handed over to Fox News' Tucker Carlson, Mediaite reports.

Regarding his decision to do so, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo asked McCarthy, "Do you have any regrets about that?"

She continued, "And what have we learned from these tapes that have been on Tucker Carlson Tonight?”"

McCarthy replied without hesitation, saying, "My goal here is transparency, and we will slowly roll out to every individual news agency. They can come see the tapes as well. The first thing I found is the January 6th Committee was not honest with us. That it's not 14,000 hours of tapes, there’s 41,000 hours of tapes. Let everyone see them to bring their own judgment."

According to Mediaite, the response from McCarthy "marks a double down from the last time reporters asked if he regretted giving the footage to Carlson."

When the House Speaker was asked by CNN's Manu Raju about potential regrets, he said, "No, I said at the very beginning transparency, and so what I want [Carlson] to produce for everybody is exactly what I said, that people could actually look at and see what was going on that day."

The Washington Post reports:

The sharp criticism from his own party left House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on the defensive following his decision last month to grant Carlson exclusive access to 41,000 hours of mostly never-before-seen video from Capitol Police security cameras that day.

In his response to Bartiromo, McCarthy also noted, "One thing I understand in America is we should have equal justice. What really raises the point with me is why did I watch federal courts, why did I watch cities burn, federal agencies — and nobody arrested there? I think we should have equal justice across this country and we should have transparency. It’s really concerning to me since we’ve taken the majority, the things I have learned the government has done and they’ve withheld information from the American people. That will not happen on our watch."

Watch the video below or at this link.

Mediaite's full report is available at this link. The Washington Post's full report is here (subscription required).

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