Eliana Willis

McCarthy: January 6 tapes to be ‘slowly’ rolled out to networks besides Fox NewsRepublican House speaker has only let Fox News see the tapes so far, giving access to the primetime host Tucker CarlsonThe Republican speaker of the US House, Kevin McCarthy, said on Sunday he would “slowly roll out” to networks other than Fox News more than 40,000 hours of security footage from the January 6 attack on Congress.Mike Pence: history will hold Donald Trump accountable over Capitol attackRead more“We will slowly roll out to every individual news agency,” McCarthy told Sunday Morning Futures, a show broadcast by Fox News. “They can come see the tapes as well. Let everyone see them to bring their own judgment.”McCarthy has only let Fox News see the tapes so far, giving access to the primetime host Tucker Carlson.The move was blasted by Democrats in Congress and Republican critics of Donald Trump – who incited the Capitol attack in an attempt to overturn his election defeat – even before Carlson showed his first excerpts this week.Carlson claimed the tapes showed “mostly peaceful chaos”, Trump supporters acting like tourists, and that many of more than 1,000 people arrested, some convicted of crimes including seditious conspiracy, had been unjustly targeted.Carlson continued to show the footage even as filings in a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News by a voting machine company showed that in private messages, Fox News hosts said Trump was lying about voter fraud in the 2020 election and Carlson himself professed to “passionately hate” the former president.On Sunday, McCarthy claimed he did not “give” the tapes to Carlson.“I didn’t give the tapes,” he said. “I allowed [him] to come see them, just like an exclusive with anybody else. My goal here is transparency.”McCarthy also wielded a common rightwing talking point, likening January 6 – a violent assault linked to nine deaths including law enforcement suicides – to protests for racial justice after the police murder of George Floyd in summer 2020 which sometimes turned violent.McCarthy said: “Why did I watch federal courts, why did I watch cities burn, federal agencies or something, and nobody arrested there? I think we should have equal justice across this country.”Nancy Mace, a relatively moderate Republican from South Carolina, tried to make the same point on CNN’s State of the Union.Though she said the tapes should have been given to “every media outlet”, Mace added: “We saw very few arrests when there were attacks by … members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. I had my house spray-painted two summers ago and no one’s been held to account for that.”Mace was not pressed by her host. But other Republicans spoke unfavourably of McCarthy’s decision to give the Capitol tapes to Carlson, and how Carlson used them.At a Washington dinner on Saturday night, former vice-president Mike Pence, who the mob targeted on January 6, said: “Make no mistake about it, what happened that day was a disgrace. And it mocks decency to portray it any other way.”On Sunday, speaking to CBS’s Face the Nation, Michael McCaul, the Republican chair of the House homeland security committee, said: “I think the American people deserve to see all the footage from that day, and all the footage is not going to be, you know, tourism at the Capitol.“It’s going to show a very dark, tragic day that I witnessed firsthand, that included our Capitol police being assaulted, 140 of them injured, two pipe bombs. One Capitol police officer killed, and a protester killed. That’s not a good day.”TopicsUS Capitol attackKevin McCarthyFox NewsTV newsnewsReuse this content More

Mike Pence: history will hold Donald Trump accountable over Capitol attackFormer vice-president, speaking at Gridiron dinner, says it ‘mocks decency’ to portray January 6 as anything other than a ‘disgrace’Mike Pence has offered a rebuke of his one-time boss Donald Trump, saying history will hold the former president accountable for his role in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.Judge who told Pence not to overturn election predicts ‘beginning of end of Trump’Read morePence, then vice-president, was in the Capitol when thousands of Trump supporters breached the building in an attempt to stop Congress certifying the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.As Senate president, Pence presided over the ceremonial task of approving the votes of the electoral college.Throughout the siege, Trump sent several tweets, one calling on Republicans to “fight” and others making false claims of voter fraud. He also criticised Pence for certifying the results.Some rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence”. A makeshift gallows was erected outside. Pence was spirited to safety by Secret Service agents.On Saturday at the Gridiron dinner in Washington, Pence told journalists and their guests: “President Trump was wrong. I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”Pence is now considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 – against Trump, the clear leader in polling.Pence rarely addressed January 6 in the months after the riot but he has now upped his criticism of the rioters and Trump. In a memoir released in November he accused Trump of endangering his family.“What happened that day was a disgrace,” Pence told the Gridiron audience. “And it mocks decency to portray it any other way. For as long as I live, I will never, ever diminish the injuries sustained, the lives lost, or the heroism of law enforcement on that tragic day.”A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Pence’s remarks came a few days after the Fox News host Tucker Carlson aired highly selective, misleading security footage of the Capitol attack, in an attempt to claim many rioters were “orderly”.Carlson’s depiction was sharply criticised by Democrats and Senate Republicans. Many other Republicans, particularly in the House of Representatives, shrugged off the episode.On Sunday, a relatively moderate House Republican was asked if Pence was right to say history would hold Trump accountable for January 6. Nancy Mace, from South Carolina, sidestepped the question.“I see this in two parts,” she told CNN’s State of the Union. “I think both sides are really struggling, looking at the nomination process. You’ve got some on the left that don’t want Biden to run, you’ve got those on the right that don’t want [Trump] to run.“You know, a lot of folks on both sides keep bringing up January 6, and it’s keeping us from moving our country forward.”Mace was not among the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol attack, making Trump’s second impeachment the most bipartisan in US history.Nonetheless, she also saluted her own success in defeating a challenger endorsed by Trump last year, and said Republicans should unite behind a candidate “who can win the White House”.Asked again if Trump would be held accountable, Mace said: “He is one of the only candidates in right now … we have a long way to go for additional candidates to jump in and see how the field lays out.”Asked if the Republican House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, was right to have released more than 40,000 hours of Capitol security footage to Carlson – a decision for which McCarthy has faced fierce criticism – Mace said: “I said early on … it was important that it should be released to every outlet including CNN, every media outlet, every defense attorney so that the public can see for itself.“There was violence on that day. You cannot deny that and you know, it was a dark day in our history. But so was the summer of 2020.”Mace proceeded to compare the deadly attack on Congress – now linked to nine deaths, more than a thousand arrests and hundreds of convictions including some for seditious conspiracy – to protests for racial justice after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.“We saw very few arrests when there were attacks by … members of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. I had my house spray painted two summers ago and no one’s been held to account for that.”
Reuters contributed reporting
TopicsUS Capitol attackMike PenceDonald TrumpUS politicsRepublicansTrump administrationUS elections 2024newsReuse this content More

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson was ‘not credible’ given his misrepresentation of the January riots after obtaining footage from Republican house speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Carlson aired his first segment on the riots on Tuesday, where he described the mob that attacked Capitol Hill as ‘peaceful sightseers’. Jean-Pierre told reporters: ‘As it relates to the Tucker Carlson question, we agree with the Fox Nation’s own attorneys and executives who have repeatedly stressed in multiple courts of law that Tucker Carlson is not credible when it comes to this issue in particular’

White House calls Tucker Carlson ‘shameful’ for misrepresenting January 6 footage – live More

Murdoch feared Fox News hosts went ‘too far’ on Trump election lie, files showEmail from billionaire mogul among reams of new evidence unsealed in defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting SystemsRupert Murdoch said Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham maybe “went too far” in their coverage of Donald Trump’s voter fraud lie, according to an email submitted as evidence in a defamation lawsuit brought by an election operations company.Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footageRead moreDominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6bn, accusing the cable TV network of amplifying debunked allegations that their voting machines were used to rig the 2020 US presidential election against Trump, in favour of Joe Biden.Documents that became public on Tuesday offered a window into Fox’s internal deliberations. They show executives, producers and hosts discussing concerns about the network’s reputation and casting doubt on the plausibility of Trump’s claims.More than 6,500 pages were released. The full extent of the evidence is not clear as many filings are heavily redacted.In one exhibit, Murdoch, now 91 and chairman of Fox Corporation, emailed the Fox News president, Suzanne Scott, the day after Biden’s inauguration, asking: “Is it ‘unarguable that high-profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6th an important chance to have the result overturned’? Maybe Sean and Laura went too far. All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump, but what did he tell his viewers?”In an earlier exchange, Murdoch wrote that it had been suggested that primetime hosts say something like “the election is over and Joe Biden won”. Murdoch told Scott some version of this would “go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen” and reasoned that Trump would “concede eventually”.According to the Dominion filings, Murdoch emailed a friend that the notion state legislators could change the election outcome – an idea gaining traction on the right – “sound[s] ridiculous. There’d be riots like never before.”“Stupid and damaging,” Murdoch continues, referring to a news conference by the then Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “The only one encouraging Trump and misleading him. Both increasingly mad. The real danger is what he might do as president.”In a text, Murdoch described the claims of election fraud as “really crazy stuff”.These exhibits and other material included in Dominion’s summary judgment motion are part of the company’s effort to prove Fox News either knew the statements it aired were false or recklessly disregarded their accuracy. That is the standard of “actual malice”, which public figures must prove in defamation cases.Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general found no fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election. Trump’s allegations have been rejected by dozens of courts, including by judges he appointed.The lawsuit has given a stunning insight into the gap between what Fox News presented to millions of viewers and what its top stars thought and said in private, as well as their dread of losing audience to competitors.Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the host Tucker Carlson texted a producer to say: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately.”In an exchange more than a month earlier, Carlson said what Trump “is good at is destroy[ing] things. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Fox News argues claims by Trump and his lawyers were inherently newsworthy and protected by the constitution. The network said in a statement the newly released documents show Dominion using “distortions and misinformation” to “smear Fox News and trample on free speech”.Fox News has said that Dominion’s “extreme” interpretation of defamation law would chill press freedom.Its evidence includes more context of testimony and messages that it says Dominion “cherry-picked” and “misrepresented”.For example, Fox News cites additional testimony by the Fox Corp chief executive, Lachlan Murdoch, who said under oath he was “concerned” but “not overly concerned” by declining ratings after the election.In a reply brief, Dominion pushes back: “The charges Fox broadcast against Dominion are false. Fox does not spend a word of its brief arguing the truth of any accused statement.”“Finally, Fox has conceded what it knew all along,” the brief reads.The exhibits released on Tuesday had several references to accusations against Dominion made by the Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. In one email, the Fox News host Dana Perino referenced a Powell interview with another host, Maria Bartiromo, saying “this is nuts”. Carlson said in a text message: “Sidney Powell is lying.”In another exhibit, Hannity said he was giving Powell time to produce evidence but stopped having her appear on-air after she failed to deliver. Hannity has been quoted by Dominion during a deposition as saying he “did not believe” claims by Powell “for one second”.In his own deposition in January, Murdoch was asked by a lawyer for Dominion, “Do you believe that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair?”The media mogul replied: “Yes.”He added later: “The election was not stolen.”A Dominion spokesperson said the “emails, texts, and deposition testimony speak for themselves. We welcome all scrutiny of our evidence because it all leads to the same place – Fox knowingly spread lies causing enormous damage to an American company.”The trial, set to begin on 17 April, is slated to last five weeks. But there is little sign of it making an impact on the tone and tenor of Fox News coverage. Carlson has this week used footage of the deadly January 6 attack to falsely portray it as a largely peaceful gathering, earning rebukes from Democrats and Republicans in Congress.Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “It wasn’t about the country, it was about the ratings. It wasn’t about objective, honest journalism. It was about Maga [Make America great again, Trump’s slogan] propagandism.“It’s about further ingratiation of Fox and its cohorts, the folks on TV, being loyal to Trump to the point that they were so afraid of losing him. It is like the worst, most dependent relationship in history because the consequences go beyond Fox and Trump.”Reuters contributed reportingTopicsRupert MurdochUS politicsFox NewsUS television industrySean HannityUS elections 2020Joe BidennewsReuse this content More

Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footageFox News continues to claim January 6 was peaceful while legal filings show him saying Trump is good at ‘destroying things’The Fox News host Tucker Carlson told an associate he “hated” Donald Trump “passionately”, new filings in a $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems revealed.Rupert Murdoch feared Fox hosts may have gone ‘too far’ on 2020 voter fraud claims, court files showRead moreEven as the filings were reported on Tuesday, Carlson continued to broadcast January 6 security footage in his attempt to cast the deadly attack on Congress as “peaceful chaos” arising from a protest of Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson said in a text on 4 January 2021, two days before the riot. “I truly can’t wait.”He also wrote: “I hate him passionately … What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Many observers think the Dominion suit, over the broadcast of lies about electoral fraud by Trump and his allies, could prove seriously costly to Fox News.Hosts and executives up to and including Rupert Murdoch have been shown to have said Trump was lying, and to have ridiculed surrogates including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell but to have broadcast their claims regardless.In one message newly revealed on Tuesday, the host Laura Ingraham called Powell a “complete nut” and said “no one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”In a statement, Fox News said Dominion was “using further distortion and misinformation in its PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on freedom of speech and freedom of the press”.Carlson is Fox News’ premier primetime host. Last month, over protests from Democrats and Fox News’ rivals, the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, chose to give Carlson more than 40,000 hours of security footage from the Capitol on January 6.After Carlson’s first broadcast on Monday, Democrats, Senate Republicans, the chief of Capitol police and the family of an officer who died the day after the riot were among those to condemn him.The police chief, Tom Manger, said in an internal memo Carlson’s broadcast was “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions”, “conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video” and “fail[ed] to provide context about the chaos and violence … before or during these less tense moments”.Manger also said Carlson’s staff did not reach out to “provide accurate context”.The family of Brian Sicknick, who was 42 when he suffered two strokes and died a day after battling rioters and being sprayed with chemicals, decried “the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called news network”.Nine deaths have been linked to the Capitol attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than 1,000 people have been charged and hundreds convicted of offences including seditious conspiracy.Trump escaped conviction in an impeachment trial and has not been criminally charged. A House committee made four referrals to the Department of Justice.On air on Tuesday, Carlson claimed Democrats had shown “hysteria, overstatement, crazed hyperbole, red-in-the-face anger” over his use of the January 6 footage. It was “not outrage”, he said, but “fear. It’s panic.”He then focused on Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, saying footage would show the January 6 security failure was her fault.The media continued to pore over the filings in the Dominion suit.In another text, Carlson said of “the last four years” under Trump, “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”TopicsFox NewsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer launched a blistering attack on the chamber floor on Tuesday on Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson for his ‘shameful’ portrayal of January 6 footage, after Carlson made first use of security footage from the riot obtained from Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker. The Fox News anchor suggested in his show that the rioters that attacked Capitol Hill on Jan 6 were ‘peaceful sightseers’.
Schumer told senators: ‘With contempt for the facts, disregard of the risks, and knowing full well he was lying to his audience, Fox News host Tucker Carlson ran a lengthy segment arguing the January 6 Capitol attack was not a violent insurrection.’ 
Schumer also called on Rupert Murdoch, Fox News’ owner, to stop Carlson airing a second segment of his show on the January 6 insurrection. ‘You know it’s a lie, you’ve admitted it’s a lie,’ said Schumer, referring to messages shared privately by Fox anchors in which many of them mocked claims that Biden’s election was fraudulent.

‘Sleaze-slinging’ Fox News denounced by family of January 6 officer who died More

FBI searches for two Capitol attack defendants who have gone missingJoseph Hutchinson and Olivia Pollock, whose brother is also a January 6 defendant, had ankle monitors that were removed or alteredThe FBI is searching for a Florida woman who was supposed to stand trial on Monday on charges stemming from the January 6 Capitol attack as well as another riot defendant who has also gone missing, officials said.A federal judge in Washington issued bench warrants for the arrest of Olivia Pollock and Joseph Hutchinson III last week after the court was notified that they had tampered with or removed the ankle monitors that track their location, said Joe Boland, a supervisory special agent with the FBI’s Lakeland, Florida, office.US Capitol rioter pleads guilty to stealing badge from beaten officerRead moreBoland said the FBI has recovered one of the defendants’ ankle monitors after they removed it, but declined to say whether it was Pollock’s or Hutchinson’s. As of Monday afternoon, the FBI had not located either of them, he said.Olivia Pollock, of Lakeland, is the sister of another January 6 defendant, Jonathan Pollock, who has been on the lam for months. The FBI has offered a reward of up to $30,000 in exchange for information leading to his arrest and conviction. He is accused of assaulting multiple police officers during the riot.Olivia Pollock and Hutchinson were initially arrested in 2021 and charged in a five-person indictment with assaulting law enforcement and other crimes. Hutchinson is representing himself at trial, and an attorney appointed to assist him as standby counsel declined to comment on Monday.Olivia Pollock’s lawyer, Elita Amato, said on Monday that her client “had been diligently assisting in her defense for her upcoming trial prior to her disappearance”.Authorities encouraged anyone with information about their whereabouts to contact the FBI.Olivia Pollock, who was wearing a ballistic plate-carrier vest during the riot, is accused of elbowing an officer in the chest and trying to strip the officer’s baton away during the melee. Jonathan Pollock is accused of thrusting a riot shield into an officer’s face and throat, pulling an officer down steps and punching others.Authorities say Hutchinson pulled back a fence that allowed other rioters to swarm police trying to defend the Capitol, punched an officer and grabbed the sleeve of another before throwing the officer out of his way.Hutchinson, who now lives in Georgia, was scheduled to face trial in August. The judge on Monday rescheduled Olivia Pollock’s trial for August as well.Also on Monday, a Colorado man pleaded guilty to using a chemical spray to attack police officers who were trying to hold off the mob.Robert Gieswein, of Woodland Park, Colorado, is scheduled to be sentenced on 9 June. Estimated sentencing guidelines for Gieswein recommend a prison sentence ranging from three years and five months to four years and three months, according to his plea agreement.Gieswein was wearing a helmet, flak jacket and goggles and carrying a baseball bat when he stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021. He marched to the building from the Washington monument with members of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group.Gieswein repeatedly sprayed an “aerosol irritant” at police officers, pushed against a line of police and was one of the first rioters to enter the Capitol, according to a court filing accompanying his guilty plea to assault charges.Federal authorities have said Gieswein appeared to be an adherent of the Three Percenters militia movement and ran a private paramilitary training group called the Woodland Wild Dogs.Nearly 1,000 people have been charged so far in the riot. Sentences have ranged from probation for people who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor crimes to 10 years in prison for a retired New York police department officer who used a metal flagpole to assault an officer.TopicsUS Capitol attackThe far rightFloridaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

The former US president has promised to ‘finish what we started’ in an address to supporters at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland. Trump delivered the keynote speech, saying he was engaged in his ‘final battle’ as he tries to return to the White House. He left the Oval Office after a failed attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election, culminating in a deadly riot in the US Capitol

‘I am your retribution’: Trump rules supreme at CPAC as he relaunches bid for White House
A diminished but loyal Trump Maga crowd at CPAC: ‘There’s one choice’ More