What McCarthy Just Vowed to Do With the Jan. 6 Tapes Will Enrage the Establishment

Leah Barkoukis | March 10, 2023 7:00 AM

In the name of transparency, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has vowed to release the Jan. 6, 2021, security footage to the general public.

During an interview with Breitbart, McCarthy explained the more than 40,000 hours of tape will need to be reviewed first to address any security concerns.

The pledge comes after the California Republican gave the footage to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who has been covering portions of the previously unseen video this week.

“We just want to make sure we go through them all, and it takes time,” McCarthy said. “The first thing that Tucker said too, he didn’t want to show any exits to cause any problems. We asked the Capitol Police, ‘Were there any concerns?’ They came back with one, and we mitigated that, but it was interesting, that one that they had a problem with, Eric Swalwell had had up on the internet for the last two years showing that part.”

He went on to defend releasing the footage to Carlson, despite criticism from those on the left and right.

“Well this is all about transparency,” McCarthy said, explaining his decision to release the tapes. “I think it’s better for transparency that anyone can make their own decision up, and as we walk through these, these are many more hours of tapes than the January 6 committee told us. It’s not 14,000. It’s 42,000 hours. We want to make sure for security purposes our certain exits aren’t shown and others. But you know the most interesting thing, when I had the team talk to the Capitol Police about making sure they had no problems with the exit and so on, they said January 6 never asked them that. They showed the exit of the vice president. They showed the exit from my office. They literally had then Speaker Pelosi’s daughter showing the secure location that they take the leadership. That’s not supposed to be known to anybody, and CNN reported it, and I don’t remember the press ever getting upset with that. So what we want to do is make sure we have this out that everybody can see it.”

"They're on the same side! The Senate majority leader joins the Senate minority leader. [Sens.] Thom Tillis, Mitt Romney, they're all on the same side, so it's actually not about left and right, it’s not about Republican and Democrat," he said. "Here you have people with shared interests, the open borders people, the people like Mitch McConnell who are living in splendor on Chinese money, the people who underneath it all have everything in common are all aligned against everyone else…"