House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is facing an ethics complaint filed by a nonprofit watchdog group that accuses the GOP leader of being politically motivated in his release of security camera footage of the Jan. 6 riot to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Members of Public Citizen filed a complaint against McCarthy on Tuesday, requesting that the Office of Congressional Ethics investigate the speaker over whether he violated House rules. The request comes one day after Carlson began releasing portions of the footage on his prime-time show, prompting concerns among other news outlets he would “advocate an inaccurate story of events.”
“The Speaker’s release of security footage exclusively to Tucker Carlson is pure and simple using congressional resources for partisan gamesmanship — the very type of polarizing gamesmanship that has caused such damage to the public’s perception of the integrity of Congress,” the group wrote in its letter.
McCarthy’s decision to give Carlson the footage came in response to demands from Republican lawmakers who pushed the party leader for weeks to release the video. McCarthy has repeatedly defended his decision to share the footage with Carlson, arguing the release was important to ensure a transparent investigation into the Capitol riot.
The House speaker has vowed to make the footage available to other news outlets once Carlson’s crew is finished sifting through it, but it’s unclear how long that may take. Public Citizen denounced McCarthy over the decision to provide the footage exclusively to Carlson, accusing the speaker of violating the First Amendment.
“It was wrong for Speaker McCarthy to provide this footage to one organization that happens to be politically aligned with him and not release the videos to the media generally at the same time,” the letter states. “This is not like granting an exclusive interview; this is providing a valuable government resource exclusively to one news outlet and discriminating against others, which flies in the face of First Amendment values.”
McCarthy has previously defended releasing the surveillance tapes to only Carlson, brushing off criticism as other journalists just being “jealous.”
“And that’s interesting because every person in the press works off exclusives on certain things,” McCarthy told the Washington Post.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Several news outlets have requested access to the surveillance footage, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Politico, the Associated Press, NBC News, CNN, Axios, and others. Attorneys for the outlets argued the exclusive release to Carlson risks “an ideologically-based narrative … [to] take hold in the public consciousness.”
Carlson debuted his first segment on the Capitol riot tapes on Monday, using the footage to portray the riot as “mostly peaceful chaos.” The prime-time host said he plans to continue releasing more footage of the attack throughout the week.