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      Republican response to the January 6 Capitol attack divides party

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      Republican response to the January 6 Capitol attack divides partyLine are drawn between the extremist wing and those who distance themselves from portraying the rioters as ‘sightseers’Some Republicans have rebuked efforts by Donald Trump and Fox News host Tucker Carlson to whitewash the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, underscoring a significant split in the party over attempts to downplay the events of the day.Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House, turned over more than 40,000 hours of security footage from the Capitol to Carlson earlier this year. This week, Carlson aired selectively edited portions of that footage, falsely claiming the rioters were “sightseers” and “not insurrectionists”. At least 1,000 people have been arrested for their role in the January 6 attack. Five people died as a result of it.Mike Pence: history will hold Donald Trump accountable over Capitol attackRead moreMore than 999 people have been arrested so far, according to the justice department. Around 518 people have pleaded guilty to federal crimes to date and 53 have been found guilty at trial.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, quickly distanced himself from Carlson’s portrayal. “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks,” he said on Tuesday.Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, was blunter in his critique. “I think it’s bullshit,” he said earlier this week.“I was here. I was down there, and I saw maybe a few tourists, a few people who got caught up in things,” he said. “But when you see police barricades breached, when you see police officers assaulted, all of that … if you were just a tourist you should’ve probably lined up at the visitors’ center and came in on an orderly basis.”Mitt Romney, the junior Republican senator from Utah, told reporters that attempts to downplay the January 6 attack were “dangerous”.“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, according to NBC. ““And people saw that it was violent and destructive and should never happen again. But trying to normalize that behavior is dangerous and disgusting.”McCarthy has defended his decision to give Carlson the footage. “I said at the very beginning: transparency. What I wanted to produce for everyone was exactly what I said so people could look at it and see what went on that day,” he told reporters this week.Trump, who is under investigation for his role in the January 6 attack, praised Carlson on Tuesday. “GREAT JOB BY TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT,” he wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday. “The Unselect Committee of political Hacks & Thugs has been totally discredited. They knowingly refused to show the Videos that mattered. They should be tried for Fraud and Treason, and those imprisoned and being persecuted should be exonerated and released, NOW!”“LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB. THANK YOU TO TUCKER CARLSON AND SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE KEVIN McCARTHY FOR WHAT YOU BOTH HAVE DONE. NEW VIDEO FOOTAGE IS IRREFUTABLE!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social earlier this week.Trump recently recorded a single for charity with some of the people in prison for the January 6 attack.The far-right Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has long downplayed the January 6 attack. Andrew Clyde, a Georgia congressman, in 2021 compared the rioters to tourists at the Capitol.But Dan Crenshaw, another conservative Republican congressman from Texas, said that continuing to downplay the attack would just be embarrassing to the party.“It’s definitely stupid to keep talking about this … So what is the purpose of continuing to bring it up unless you’re trying to feed Democrat narratives even further?” he told Politico.“I don’t really have a problem with making it all public. But if your message is then to try and convince people that nothing bad happened, then it’s just gonna make us look silly.”TopicsRepublicansUS Capitol attackUS politicsKevin McCarthyMitt RomneyDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      McCarthy: January 6 tapes to be ‘slowly’ rolled out to networks besides Fox News

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      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

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      Mike Pence: history will hold Donald Trump accountable over Capitol attack

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      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

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      Mike Pence: Donald Trump was wrong, history will hold him accountable

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      Mike Pence: Donald Trump was wrong, history will hold him accountableFormer vice-president, speaking at annual Gridiron dinner, says it ‘mocks decency’ to portray Capitol attack as anything other than a ‘disgrace’Mike Pence has offered a rebuke of his one-time boss Donald Trump, saying history will hold him accountable for his role in the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol.Pence, then the vice-president, was in the Capitol when thousands of Trump supporters breached the building in an attempt to stop Congress certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.As the vice-president has the constitutional role of Senate president, Pence was presiding over what had always been 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.Judge who told Pence not to overturn election predicts ‘beginning of end of Trump’Read more“President Trump was wrong,” Pence told journalists and their guests at the Gridiron dinner, an annual white-tie event in Washington DC.“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, who is considering a run for the Republican nomination for the 2024 presidential election, was whisked to safety by law enforcement during the attack.He rarely addressed January 6 in the months afterwards, but has since upped his criticism of the rioters and the behaviour of Trump that day. In a memoir released in November he accused Trump of endangering his family.“What happened that day was a disgrace,” Pence said on Saturday. “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 spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours.Pence’s remarks came a few days after the conservative television host Tucker Carlson aired highly selective, misleading security footage of the Capitol attack, in an attempt to claim that many of the rioters were “orderly”.Carlson’s depiction was sharply criticised by Democrats and several high-profile Republicans in the Senate, though many other Republicans – particularly in the House of Representatives – shrugged off the episode.With ReutersTopicsUS Capitol attackMike PenceDonald TrumpUS politicsReuse this content More

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      Republicans try to reframe January 6 as a sightseeing tour – will it work?

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      Republicans try to reframe January 6 as a sightseeing tour – will it work?Now in control of the House, Republicans are making light of the violence of the day and assailing the investigation into the Capitol attackIt might be thought that Republicans would prefer not to remind Americans of the day their president nearly destroyed US democracy.But the party’s right wing is going all in to rewrite the history of the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters, and to make political martyrs of those imprisoned for assaulting police officers and sending politicians fleeing as the mob attempted to stop Congress from endorsing Joe Biden’s election victory.Fox News produced ‘zero’ evidence to back election lie, defamation case hearsRead moreTrump himself has waded in by appearing on a song sung by the “J6 Prison Choir” of men locked up for their part in the insurrection while Republican supporters in Congress are setting up a delegation to visit the prisoners in what will be seen as an act of solidarity.Meanwhile, after taking control of the House of Representatives in January, the Republicans have launched an investigation into the then Democratic-led original congressional investigation of the January 6 Capitol attack which recommended Trump’s prosecution for inciting the riot.But leading the charge in the Orwellian attempt to control the past in the hope that it will lead Republicans to control the future is the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who pressured Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House of Representatives, into releasing to him thousands of hours of video of Trump supporters swarming the Capitol.Carlson presented selected snippets on his nightly show that he claimed proved the rioters were really no more than tourists who “obviously revered the Capitol”.“These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers,” he said.Carlson, who has claimed that the January 6 attack was a “false flag” operation by the Washington establishment to discredit Trump’s supporters, said the video shows “mostly peaceful chaos”.“Taken as a whole the video record does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim,” he said.Republicans in Washington are not universally happy with this revisionism. Senator Kevin Cramer said that the attack “was not just some rowdy protest of Boy Scouts” and that the Fox News interpretation was “a lie”. Senator Thom Tillis called Carlson’s description of events “bullshit”.Asked if it was a mistake for McCarthy to hand the footage over to Fox News, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, distanced himself from the consequences.“My concern is how it was depicted,” he said.McCarthy defended the release of the video in the name of transparency although that did not explain why he gave it only to Fox.Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said McCarthy was driven principally by thirst for power as the Republican right made release of the video a condition of support for his election as speaker in January.“Everybody knows that McCarthy, who was once very upset about what happened on January 6 and said so, is just using this for his own purposes. This was simply an action designed to get him the final few votes needed to become speaker. He sold out his country. It was absolutely spineless,” Sabato said.“Carlson and McCarthy have given the crazies, the far-right extremists, the neo-Nazi white supremacists who are obsessed with January 6, the counter reality they’ve been looking for of a bunch of patriots taking a tour in the Capitol.”Sabato said Carlson, who is working to shore up his own credibility with Trump’s followers amid revelations that the Fox News host regularly derided the then president and said “I hate him passionately”, was a driving force behind the move.“Tucker Carlson on his own show said that if McCarthy wants these votes to become speaker then show us by releasing all of the information on the film. Everybody knew from the instant Carlson got it he was going to put together snippets that were very misleading, and which excluded all of the real action that day, all of the criminal action that day. It was totally predictable,” he said.While Carlson’s selective interpretation of the video was rapidly derided by some Republicans, as well as by the Capitol police chief and the family of an officer who died after being assaulted as “unscrupulous and outright sleazy”, plenty of others were onboard.The House Republicans’ Twitter account said that Carlson’s take on the footage was a “MUST WATCH”.Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia said the clips were proof of the innocence of the more than 1,000 people charged with crimes as the mob stormed the Capitol. Hundreds have already been convicted including some jailed for violence.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’ve seen enough. Release all J6 political prisoners now,” Collins tweeted to considerable derision.The attempt to turn the imprisoned rioters into martyrs gained steam after Trump appeared in a song by a choir of men jailed over their involvement in the January 6 attack. They sing the national anthem as the former president recites the pledge of allegiance. Trump has praised the insurrectionists and said that if he were to win the presidency again he would “very, very seriously” consider giving them all pardons.The prisoners’ cause has been taken up by other Republicans.The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was among those pressing McCarthy to release the January 6 video as a condition for her support for his election as speaker. She is expected to lead a congressional delegation to a Washington DC federal prison where some of the rioters are being held, ostensibly to check on their welfare, as the result of another of her conditions for supporting McCarthy.Meanwhile, after taking control of the House of Representatives in January, the Republicans have launched an investigation of Congress’s original investigation into the events of 6 January 2021, which recommended Trump’s prosecution for inciting the assault.The latest committee to look into the riot will be led by Congressman Barry Loudermilk, who contested Biden’s victory and likened Trump’s impeachment to the crucifixion of Jesus.Loudermilk was found by the earlier House investigation to have a given tours of the Capitol to a group of people the day before the insurrection even though it was closed to visitors. They included at least one man seen photographing corridors and staircases who was later identified outside the Capitol on 6 January making threats against members of Congress.Loudermilk tweeted that he intends to revisit the January 6 investigation because, he said, the earlier inquiry was politicised.“The J6 committee chose to ignore the facts and pursue a particular political narrative. I will not do this. As chairman of the subcommittee on oversight, I’m focused on finding out what really happened on J6 to ensure it never happens again,” he said.Former congresswoman Liz Cheney, one of only two Republicans who served on the January 6 committee, and who then lost a primary race against a Trump-backed rival, challenged Loudermilk, who declined to testify at the hearings she helped chair.“If @HouseGOP wants new Jan 6 hearings, bring it on. Let’s replay every witness & all the evidence from last year. But this time, those members who sought pardons and/or hid from subpoenas should sit on the dais so they can be confronted on live TV with the unassailable evidence,” tweeted Cheney, who was hired by Sabato earlier this month as a professor at the Center for Politics.Whether revisiting what many Americans regard as a shameful day for democracy will work in the Republicans’ favor remains to be seen.Opinion polls show that views about what happened on 6 January 2021 have not shifted dramatically in the intervening two years. According to a Quinnipiac university poll in December, 45% of Americans said that Trump bears “a lot” of responsibility for the storming of the Capitol. Just 21% did not blame him at all. The country was almost evenly split over whether the former president committed a crime that day.Polls also show a deep divide over the significance of the January 6 Capitol attack, with 50% of Americans saying it represented an assault on democracy that should not be forgotten while 44% say events are being overstated.Sabato said that while the reimagining of events will play well with hardcore Republicans, it may ultimately not be good for the party as a whole.“This will stir some of the base. But it’s not all positive for Republicans because it helps Trump, the one guy who probably will lose to Biden if it turns out to be Biden versus Trump again,” he said.TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesLiz CheneyKevin McCarthyfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footage

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      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

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      'Bald-faced lie': Chuck Schumer attacks Fox News for ‘shameful' use of January 6 footage – video

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      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

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

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      ‘Sleaze-slinging’ Fox News denounced by family of January 6 officer who diedCondemnation of ‘so-called new network’ comes after Tucker Carlson shares footage from attack courtesy of Kevin McCarthyThe family of Brian Sicknick, the US Capitol police officer who died the day after the January 6 attack on Congress, condemned Tucker Carlson and Fox News as “unscrupulous and outright sleazy”, after the primetime host made first use of security footage from the riot bestowed by Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker.Fox News hit with election complaint after Biden ad given to Trump son-in-lawRead moreA statement on Tuesday said: “The Sicknick family is outraged at the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called news network of Fox News.”Fox and Carlson, the family said, “will do the bidding of [Donald] Trump or any of his sycophant followers, no matter what damage is done to the families of the fallen, the officers who put their lives on the line and all who suffered on January 6, due to the lie started by Trump and spread by sleaze-slinging outlets like Fox”.Nine deaths have been linked to the attack on the Capitol by supporters Trump told to “fight like hell” in service of his lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of electoral fraud.Trump aimed to stop certification of Biden’s win. The process was only delayed but lawmakers including the vice-president, Mike Pence, were sent running for their lives.More than 1,000 people have been charged and hundreds convicted on charges including seditious conspiracy. Hundreds remain wanted by authorities.Trump was impeached for inciting the attack but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal. The House January 6 committee made four criminal referrals regarding Trump to the Department of Justice.Last month, to protests from Democrats and media groups, McCarthy made 41,000 hours of security footage available to Carlson and Fox News.Carlson had already claimed January 6 was a “false flag” attack, staged by authorities to entrap Trump supporters. On Monday night, he tried to portray those who stormed the Capitol as peaceful protesters.Saying the tapes showed “mostly peaceful chaos”, Carlson said: “Taken as a whole the video record does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim.”In return, the Sicknick family lambasted Carlson and Fox News.Fox News, they said, “has shown time and time again that [it is] little more than the propaganda arm of the Republican party, and like Pravda will do whatever [it is] told to keep the hatred and the lies flowing while suppressing anything resembling the truth.“Fox does this not for any sense of morality as they have none but for the quest for every penny of advertising money they can get from those who buy airtime from them.”Recent revelations from filings in a $1.6n defamation suit from Dominion Voter Systems include Rupert Murdoch, Fox News’ owner, indicating he knew Trump’s claims were false but saying his motivation for accommodating election deniers was to stop viewers deserting.The Sicknick family also called McCarthy a “disgusting excuse for a House speaker”. Later on Tuesday, the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, was asked if McCarthy had made a mistake in giving Carlson the tapes.He said: “My concern is how [the riot] was depicted, which was a different issue. Clearly the chief of the Capitol police, in my view, correctly describes what most of us witnessed first-hand on January 6.”McConnell’s Democratic counterpart, Chuck Schumer, lamented “one of the most shameful hours we have ever seen on cable television” and said Carlson had shown “contempt for the facts [and] disregard of the risks [while] knowing full well he was lying to his audience”.Carlson, Schumer said, “told the bald-faced lie that the Capitol attack, which we all saw with our own eyes, somehow was not an attack at all”.Decrying efforts to make a martyr out of Ashley Babbitt, a Trump supporter shot dead by a police officer on January 6, the Sicknick family said Carlson was “downplaying the horrid situation faced by US Capitol police and DC Metro police who were incredibly outnumbered and were literally fighting for their very lives”.Sicknick, 42, was sprayed with chemicals, for which his attacker was jailed for nearly seven years. Sicknick died the day after the riot, after suffering two strokes. A medical examiner said he died of natural causes but his name remains linked to January 6. His body lay in state at the Capitol.Sicknick’s family said “his sense of duty and incredible work ethic were the driving force which sent him back in spite of his injuries and no doubt contributed to his succumbing to his injuries the following day.Stunning Rupert Murdoch deposition leaves Fox News in a world of troubleRead more“What will it take to silence the lies from people like Carlson? What will it take to convince people that the January 6 insurrection was very real, it was very violent, and that the event was orchestrated by a man [Trump] who is every bit as corrupt and evil as Vladimir Putin.“The Sicknick family would love nothing more than to have Brian back with us and to resume our normal lives. Fictitious news outlets like Fox and its rabid followers will not allow that. Every time the pain of that day seems to have ebbed a bit organisations like Fox rip our wounds wide open again and we are frankly sick of it.“Leave us the hell alone and instead of spreading more lies from Supreme Leader Trump, why don’t you focus on real news?”Fox News did not comment.TopicsUS Capitol attackFox NewsUS television industryTelevision industryWashington DCRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More