Despite saying the Capitol Police reviewed all the footage aired on his program, Tucker Carlson only submitted one of the 40-plus clips he aired last week to the agency, a Capitol Police lawyer said in a court filing Friday, ABC News reports.
Politicians and critics from across the political spectrum have lambasted Carlson’s broadcast of the footage, which attempted to characterize the violent Republican-led pro-Trump insurrectionists as peaceful tourists by airing a total of around four minutes of 40,000 hours of video, footage that depicted specific individuals or groups as harmless. House Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy has also faced harsh blowback for leaking the footage to Carlson, with critics citing media favoritism and compromising Capitol security as just two of the reasons it was so wrong.
“Since that clip was substantially similar to a clip used in [former President Donald Trump’s second] Impeachment Trial and was publicly available, I approved the use of the clip,” Capitol Police general counsel Thomas DiBiase said. “The other approximately 40 clips, which were not from the Sensitive List [of cameras deemed the most sensitive], were never shown to me nor anyone else from the Capitol Police.”