In a shocking move that has so far been weirdly under-covered by the media, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy handed over roughly 44,000 hours of video footage of the January 6 insurrection to Fox News’s top sedition promoter, Tucker Carlson. Exclusively. Axios reported it Monday afternoon; Carlson confirmed it on his show Monday night.1

Last seen, in a court filing released last week, worrying that debunking Donald Trump’s lies about the “theft” of the 2020 election was tanking the network’s stock price, Carlson has repeatedly defended the insurrectionists, suggesting that the FBI or other “deep state” forces actually touched off the violence, that it was a “false flag” operation. A propaganda film he created about the riot was so full of lies it drove conservative (but not batshit-crazy) news anchor Chris Wallace from Fox to CNN. Carlson is an embarrassment not only to Fox but to the entire nation.2

As January 6 committee member Representative Jamie Raskin immediately tweeted last night:3

McCarthy giving 40,000 hrs of Jan. 6 tape to a pro-Putin journalist is an astounding ethical collapse. What security precautions were taken to keep this from becoming a roadmap for 2024 insurrection? Why isn’t it available to all media & public? Smell the MAGA propaganda coming.4

Indeed.5

The move seems to be part of the deal McCarthy made with far-right caucus members to become House Speaker (or SINO, as I like to call him: Speaker In Name Only). His crucial ally Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene quickly took credit on Twitter.6

We are releasing the J6 tapes and not one single lying grifter on social media had anything to do with it.7

I told you we would all along.8

Stop listening to the losers who claim they know what’s going on bc of their “sources” while they beg you for donations.9

They don’t know anything and hurt the America First movement just as bad as the Uniparty RINO’s do.10

Get ready for the truth from J6 because the video tapes are coming!11

Support urgent independent journalism this Giving Tuesday

I know that many important organizations are asking you to donate today, but this year especially, The Nation needs your support. 

Over the course of 2025, the Trump administration has presided over a government designed to chill activism and dissent. 

The Nation experienced its efforts to destroy press freedom firsthand in September, when Vice President JD Vance attacked our magazine. Vance was following Donald Trump’s lead—waging war on the media through a series of lawsuits against publications and broadcasters, all intended to intimidate those speaking truth to power. 

The Nation will never yield to these menacing currents. We have survived for 160 years and we will continue challenging new forms of intimidation, just as we refused to bow to McCarthyism seven decades ago. But in this frightening media environment, we’re relying on you to help us fund journalism that effectively challenges Trump’s crude authoritarianism. 

For today only, a generous donor is matching all gifts to The Nation up to $25,000. If we hit our goal this Giving Tuesday, that’s $50,000 for journalism with a sense of urgency. 

With your support, we’ll continue to publish investigations that expose the administration’s corruption, analysis that sounds the alarm on AI’s unregulated capture of the military, and profiles of the inspiring stories of people who successfully take on the ICE terror machine. 

We’ll also introduce you to the new faces and ideas in this progressive moment, just like we did with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. We will always believe that a more just tomorrow is in our power today.  

Please, don’t miss this chance to double your impact. Donate to The Nation today.

Katrina vanden Heuvel 

Editor and publisher, The Nation

Donate

Hours earlier, mind you, Greene had used her Twitter account to call for a second Civil War in which red states secede. (You say secession, I say sedition.) Unfortunately for Marge, her state of Georgia is purple and growing bluer all the time. She might have to decamp for other places to join her imagined red nation.12

There are other reasons McCarthy did this. He promised, before he became speaker, to hold hearings on the alleged security failures that led to the January 6 attack—and he seemed to think that could shame the Democratic leadership of the House and Senate. It’s also a way of courting Carlson, who has repeatedly criticized McCarthy as not being conservative enough.13

Carlson will likely use selectively edited video to “exonerate” some of the January 6 insurrectionists, even those who’ve already been convicted. More than one defense team has tried to use certain video clips to “prove” that their clients stood apart from the attack, or were “invited” into the Capitol; the Justice Department has been able to provide other clips with other angles that show the lawbreakers breaking the law. Invaluable security blogger Marcy Wheeler has documented the way Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean tried this and failed.14

Wheeler has long reported on possible security implications of releasing all of the video. (Federal prosecutors and the Capitol Police have opposed the release of some of the footage because it could expose the way legislators and staff escaped from the danger, as well as potential security vulnerabilities.) A Wheeler post from December 2021 exposed how video of the tunnel through which Biden walked on Inauguration Day revealed the location of cameras (which have presumably been moved). She posted again today on the implications of the release to Carlson. “Everyone seems [caught] rather flat-footed by this announcement so it may take some days or weeks [for those who oppose the release] to devise a response,” she remarked in comments to Tuesday’s post.15

As Wheeler and Raskin note, Carlson is a Vladimir Putin apologist and a fan of autocrat Viktor Orbán who actually broadcast last year from Hungary. He promotes not only testicle tanning but autocracy as well. So Carlson is getting ready to expose the Capitol’s security vulnerabilities to enemies within the country and outside of it.16

Carlson himself confirmed the deal Monday on his highly rated nightly freak show.17

“For really more than two years now we’ve been complaining about the fact that the U.S. Congress has held thousands, tens of thousands of hours of camera footage from the public from January 6th,” he told his viewers. Carlson then said he’d been granted access to the 44,000 hours last week. “Some of our smartest producers have been there looking at this stuff and trying to figure out…how it contradicts or not the story we’ve been told for more than two years. We think already that in some ways it does contradict that story,” he added.18

Of course it does, Tucker. Once your paid-to-lie team gets through with it.19

If the 44,000 hours of footage don’t compromise Capitol security—and I have no way of knowing—then why not release it widely, to other news organizations, not just Faux News? Why not make it available to the public? I really don’t have an answer to that. (It’s possible that as Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer could release it more widely.) Hoping other news media, as well as Democrats, get access to what Carlson will surely distort.20