Attorneys representing a defendant accused of crimes in connection to the January 6 insurrection in 2021 have attempted to get his trial delayed as they argue that they need access to the footage handed over to Tucker Carlson of Fox News by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Shane Jenkins is in jail as he awaits his trial. He stands accused of throwing a pole, a desk drawer, a pipe and a flag pole at members of law enforcement during the Capitol riot.
His lawyers argue that they need time to review the more than 40,000 hours of footage recently released as it could help his case.
Journalist Scott McFarlane of CBS News shared the document with the request for the footage.
“The government has disclosed approximately 16,000 hours of video footage to Mr Jenkins, which means that approximately 25,000 hours of video footage have been withheld,” the attorneys state. “Discovery in criminal cases is crucial to a fair and just judicial system.”
The Independent has reached out to lawyer John Pierce for comment. He has been reported to be representing Mr Jenkins and a number of other accused rioters.
The Independent reported in 2021 that Mr Pierce was allegedly on a ventilator in hospital with Covid-19 after saying that he would never get vaccinated.
On Tuesday, Mr Pierce tweeted that “every day it should become more and more clear to every American that [Donald Jr Trump] must be put back in the White House in 2024”.
Late on Monday, he wrote: “Still waiting for someone among 7 billion people to give an answer as to why the January 6th footage should not be publicly and immediately released.”
He also responded to a post by Georgia GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wrote: “The J6 Committee LIED to America. @TuckerCarlson is revealing the truth. They must be held accountable.”
“You and your boyfriend @SpeakerMcCarthy LIED to America. RELEASE. THE. F***ING. TAPES. #CareerPoliticianHack,” Mr Pierce wrote in response.
Mr McCarthy handed over more than 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from the attack, allowing Carlson to cherry-pick moments from the siege on Congress by Trump supporters to pretend that they were simply “orderly and meek” sightseers.
He added that most of the rioters were peaceful and only a few behaved badly.
“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” he claimed. “Instead it shows police escorting people through the building.”
“Deadly insurrection — everything about that phrase is a lie,” Carlson said on his programme. “Very little about January 6 was organized or violent. Surveillance video from inside the Capitol shows mostly peaceful chaos.”
Republican senators criticised Carlson, with Mitt Romney of Utah telling reporters that it’s “really sad to see Tucker Carlson go off the rails like that,” adding that the host is “joining a range of shock jocks that are disappointing America and feeding falsehoods”.
“It’s a very dangerous thing to do, to suggest that attacking the Capitol of the United States is in any way acceptable and it’s anything other than a serious crime, against democracy and against our country,” he said. “And people saw that it was violent and destructive and should never happen again. But trying to normalize that behaviour is dangerous and disgusting.”
