House Speaker defends giving Capitol riot video to Fox host

US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy has defended giving thousands of hours of Capitol riot footage to a Fox News host.

Asked about his decision to share the video trove with Tucker Carlson, Mr McCarthy said in a newspaper interview: “I promised.”

He said he planned to make the footage more widely available in the future.

Democrats have argued the release could expose security secrets and endanger Capitol Police officers.

Access to the video has until now been restricted mainly to a since-disbanded Democratic-led congressional committee and lawyers for the rioters.

“I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public,” the House Speaker told the New York Times.

“I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”

Mr Carlson has indicated he will start to air footage on his programme next week.

The Fox host said on Monday his team had been looking at the video trove for about a week.

During his show on Monday, Carlson said: “Some of our smartest producers have been looking at this stuff and trying to figure out what it means and how it contradicts or not the story we’ve been told for more than two years.

“We think already in some ways that it does contradict that story.”

Mr Carlson has repeatedly alleged that government agents instigated the Capitol riot on 6 January 2021. While decrying the vandalism that day, he has largely defended the rioters.

Last month on his programme, Mr Carlson called for an investigation into the “real culprits” and insisted “they’re not the January 6 protesters”.

He said there was a “very obvious clandestine role of federal agencies that encouraged” the invasion of the Capitol building, where the US House and Senate meet.

Mr Carlson has also focused on one man, Ray Epps, a former member of the Oath Keepers militia. Mr Epps was outside the Capitol, but did not enter the building that day. Like others who were in the crowd but did not join the storming of the complex, he has not been charged with a crime.

Mr Epps made bombastic statements in text messages about his role in the riot. Trump supporters have accused him of being an FBI mole. But in testimony to the congressional committee investigating the events of 6 January 2021, he repeatedly denied being in touch with police or government officials.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted the release of up to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage to Fox as an “egregious security breach”.

Democratic congressman Bennie Thompson, who chaired the Democratic-led congressional committee that investigated the riot, said: “It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly.”

In his statement, the Mississippi lawmaker said that when his committee was given the footage, “it was treated with great sensitivity given concerns about the security of lawmakers, staff, and the Capitol complex”.

While some journalists and activists have called for greater public access to the footage, Capitol Police have argued in court filings that releasing the video would reveal the locations of cameras as well as blind spots. They say that could make the US legislative building vulnerable to further attacks.

Earlier this week, Mr Carlson told the news website Axios that there was “never any legitimate reason for this footage to remain secret”.

“If there was ever a question that’s in the public’s interest to know, it’s what actually happened on January 6. By definition, this video will reveal it,” he told the website. “It’s impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that.”

The release was cheered by some of the House Speaker’s most prominent supporters on the right of the Republican party.

Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted that “Americans deserve to see the truth”.

The release comes as a number of Fox News journalists, including Mr Carlson, were named in a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, a company that says the network broadcast false and malicious rumours about voter fraud that harmed its business.

A court filing last week revealed a number of Mr Carlson’s profanity-laced text messages to colleagues in which he disparaged Trump lawyers’ claims of a rigged election, but continued to allow voter fraud conspiracists a platform on his top-rated show.

The BBC has contacted Mr McCarthy’s office and Fox News for comment.