The chief of Capitol Police blasted Tucker Carlson’s characterization of the January sixth assault on the Capitol, calling the Fox Information host’s conclusions “offensive and deceptive.”
In an inner memo, chief Thomas Manger wrote, “This system conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video. The commentary fails to supply context in regards to the chaos and violence that occurred earlier than or throughout these much less tense moments.”
Home Speaker Kevin McCarthy offered Carlson and his employees with entry to greater than 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from January 6. That drew an outcry from Democrats, who claimed that it could jeopardize Capitol safety and that Carlson would use it to attempt to current a revisionist historical past of what occurred that day.
On his present, Carlson used footage of protesters wandering by way of the halls of the Capitol to attempt to downplay the assault.
“These weren’t insurrectionists. They had been sightseers. Footage from contained in the Capitol overturns the story you will have heard about January 6,” Carlson stated.
In his letter, Manger wrote that “one false allegation is that our officers helped the rioters and acted as ‘tour guides.’ That is outrageous and false. The Division stands by the officers within the video that was proven final evening. I don’t must remind you ways outnumbered our officers had been on January 6. These officers did their finest to make use of descalation ways to attempt to discuss rioters into getting one another to go away the constructing.”
Senate Minority Chief Mitch McConnell additionally criticized Carlson, holding up Manger’s letter in settlement.
“My concern is the way it was depicted…Clearly the chief of Capitol Police, for my part, accurately describes what most of us witnessed first hand on January sixth….It was a mistake in my for for Fox Information to depict this in a approach that’s fully at variance with what our chief regulation enforcement official on the Capitol thinks.”
Carlson plans to indicate extra footage on Tuesday night.
Extra to come back.
