Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday demanded the release of imprisoned violent Jan. 6 attackers after Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired previously unseen security footage from the storming of the Capitol.
After Carlson aired cherry-picked clips of the insurrection attempt, Trump falsely said the film shows the attackers were wrongly convicted of their roles in the riot, including scores of attacks on police.
“Let the January 6 prisoners go,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “They were convicted, or are awaiting trial, based on a giant lie, a radical left con job.“
Falsely claiming the footage offers “irrefutable” defense of the attackers, Trump praised House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for giving Carlson exclusive access to some 44,000 hours of security footage of the attack.
Carlson used the Monday episode of his popular Fox show to air video of Trump supporters walking calmly around the Capitol after overwhelming outnumbered cops. He planned to show more footage Tuesday night.
He falsely asserted the footage proved most of the rioters were mere peaceful protesters.
“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” Carlson told Fox viewers Monday. “Instead it shows police escorting people through the building.”
Despite the outrageous claims by Trump and Carlson, none of the footage undercuts any of the criminal cases and convictions tied to the Jan. 6 riot.
More than 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack, including many avowed far right-wing extremists and white nationalists.
Nearly 150 cops were attacked, and about 326 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees, including 106 assaults that happened with deadly or dangerous weapons. About 60 people pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement.
Many of the admitted attackers were caught on videotape beating police and spewing racist slurs in video clips that Carlson did not air, including some of the very same attackers who were shown acting peacefully at other times in the hourslong attack.
The rioters rampaged through the Capitol chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” and “Where’s Nancy (Pelosi)” after Trump angrily told them to “fight like hell” to keep him in power minutes earlier in a fiery speech.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the former chairman of the Jan. 6 committee, called it a “dereliction of duty” for McCarthy to hand over the footage to Carlson, who has spent two years downplaying the seriousness of the effort to block the peaceful transfer of power to President Joe Biden.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer accused McCarthy and Carlson of cheerleading for another violent attack.
“Conduct like theirs is just asking for another Jan. 6 to happen,” Schumer said.
Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger accused Carlson of spreading “offensive and misleading conclusions about the Jan. 6 attack.”
Even some Republican lawmakers, who also had to run for their lives from the mob, decried the shameful effort to rewrite history.
“To somehow put that in the same category as a permitted peaceful protest is just a lie,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.
Carlson took an ugly pot shot at late Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died of a stroke caused by a blood clot after being sprayed with chemical irritant by attackers as he tried to defend American democracy.
The Fox News host aired footage of a helmeted Sicknick after the attack, which he said somehow proves Sicknick was unharmed.
Capitol Police say Sicknick later returned to his office and collapsed, an account that Carlson’s show did not even attempt to refute.
“Every time the pain of that day seems to have ebbed a bit, organizations like Fox rip our wounds wide open again,” Sicknick’s relatives said in a statement. “We are frankly sick of it.”
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