U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger hit Tucker Carlson on Tuesday, criticizing the prime-time Fox News host for his coverage of the Jan. 6 attack that featured never-before-seen surveillance footage taken from inside the Capitol during the riot.
Manger accused Carlson of deliberately selecting video clips that showed the “calmer moments” of the Capitol riot while failing to provide context of the attack as a whole. Carlson debuted the footage on his show Monday night to argue that the incident was a “mostly peaceful” gathering of protesters — even going so far as to accuse other news outlets of falsely characterizing the attack as an “insurrection.”
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“Last night an opinion program aired commentary that was filled with offensive and misleading conclusions about the January 6 attack,” Manger wrote in an internal memo to USCP officers. “The program conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video. The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.”
Carlson played footage that showed Jacob Chansley, who has become known as the “QAnon Shaman,” walking around the Capitol without pushback from security officials. In one clip, Chansley is seen walking alongside two officers to the Senate chamber, where he is later seen taking a photo inside.
While walking around, video footage does not appear to show any of the officers intervening — prompting Carlson to accuse Capitol Police of being complicit “as his tour guides.” It’s not clear from the video whether Chansley and the officers engaged in a conversation, as there is no audio in the tapes.
Manger pushed back on Carlson’s comments, calling his accusations “outrageous and false.”
“This Department stands by the officers in the video that was shown last night,” Manger wrote. “I don’t have to remind you how outnumbered our officers were on January 6. Those officers did their best to use de-escalation tactics to try to talk rioters into getting each other to leave the building.”
Carlson accused Democrats of lying about several aspects of the Jan. 6 riot, including the death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick. Sicknick died of natural causes one day after the Capitol riot, but an autopsy report ruled that “all that transpired (on January 6) played a role in his condition.”
However, Carlson sought to downplay his death, accusing Democrats of using Sicknick as a “prop” and “martyr.”
“The most disturbing accusation from last night was that our late friend and colleague Brian Sicknick’s death had nothing to do with his heroic actions on January 6,” Manger wrote. “The Department maintains, as anyone with common sense would, that had Officer Sicknick not fought valiantly for hours on the day he was violently assaulted, Officer Sicknick would not have died the next day.”
Sicknick’s family also responded to Carlson’s comments, denouncing Fox News as being the “propaganda arm of the Republican Party.”
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"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 who will do the bidding of Trump or any of its 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 Jan. 6th due to the lies started by Trump and spread by sleaze slinging outlets like Fox," the family wrote in a scathing statement. "Every time the pain of that day seems to have ebbed a bit, organizations like Fox rip our wounds wide open again and we are frankly sick of it. Leave us the hell alone.”
Carlson gained access to the surveillance video after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) agreed to hand over more than 41,000 hours of footage as part of his concessions to be elected speaker. Carlson plans to continue airing footage throughout the week from several angles on the Capitol grounds that was exclusively given to his crew.