In February, we learned that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., made the very troubling decision to release U.S. Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 insurrection exclusively to Tucker Carlson of Fox News. McCarthy said he was doing it because the tapes belonged to the people — which makes what he did utterly incomprehensible.
That incomprehensibility is only reinforced by the parallel drama taking place in court, where evidence in the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox, scheduled for an April trial, is providing truly shocking news.
That incomprehensibility is only reinforced by the parallel drama taking place in court.
In a deposition taken earlier in the Dominion case that was released Monday, Fox Corp. Chair Rupert Murdoch testified that “some of our commentators were endorsing” former President Donald Trump’s big lie that the election was stolen from him. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight,” he said. Now one of those same commentators, courtesy of the speaker of the House, has been handed the opportunity to rewrite our history and do further damage to our country.
Americans deserve better.
McCarthy seems to disagree. For one thing, he was quite cavalier about the enormous security risk releasing all of the video created. The footage turned over to Carlson could compromise security for members and employees of Congress and provide future would-be-rioters with a road map to the Capitol and its security systems. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., put it this way in a letter: “The footage Speaker McCarthy is making available to Fox News is a treasure trove of closely held information about how the Capitol complex is protected and its public release would compromise the safety of the Legislative Branch and allow those who want to commit another attack to learn how Congress is safeguarded.”
McCarthy now claims he will eventually make the thousands of hours of…
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