The new House speaker believes security camera footage of the Capitol riot should be shared like Elon Musk’s Twitter files.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made his suggestion during a Sunday appearance on the Fox News program “Sunday Morning Futures.” Releasing the entire footage was a concession negotiated during the runup to McCarthy’s election to lead the 118th Congress.
He explained to host Maria Bartiromo such a public release of the tapes is needed to balance what he called the “politicization” fostered by Rep. Nancy Pelosi and the House J6 Select Committee.
““The best way to handle this is exactly the way Elon Musk [did]: Just put all the information out there and let people see what is truth and what is not,” McCarthy explained. “So, the best way to do that is to release the tapes. People can know for themselves instead of picking and choosing what views they want people to see.”
Musk has been sharing troves of internal Twitter communications with various journalists who release them in threads under the hashtag “TwitterFiles.” Released emails and chat sessions have revealed FBI influencing social media to censor unwanted narratives about issues like COVID-19 and Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Files released by independent journalists like Substack writer Matt Taibbi illustrated how powerful people and agencies silenced voices opposed to them. His subsequent thread explored the deplatforming of people like former President Donald Trump.
Free Press editor Bari Weiss shared correspondence that showed Twitter employees build blacklists, prevent disfavored tweets from trending and limit account visibility.
Author Michael Schellenberger’s release of Twitter Files Part 4 showed the internal discussion about permanently banning Trump. Ms. Weiss furthered the discussion with her Part 5 thread in the Twitter Files.
Taibbi’s Part 6 release of Twitter Files shows the extent of FBI influence on Twitter. It was so dominant that Taibbi referred to Twitter as an FBI subsidiary.
Capitol Police claim the system of cameras captured more than 14,000 hours of footage between noon and 8 p.m. of January 6, 2021.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said the tapes “would give more full context to that day rather than the cherry-picked moments the January 6 Committee tried to use to inflame and further divide our country.” He added the footage could provide exculpatory evidence to January 6 defendants, according to a report from The Daily Wire.
“I think that it’s an argument made by the Department of Justice because they don’t want to expose the extent to which there might have been federal assets or agents enhancing criminal acuity,” Gaetz said in a CNN interview.
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