David Giglio, a Trump-aligned MAGA Republican who is running to represent California's 20th Congressional District and unseat Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), called on House Republicans to censure the former speaker for refusing to release Jan. 6 surveillance footage to the public.

Giglio, who launched his challenge to McCarthy last month, demanded accountability in the form of a censure due to McCarthy withholding footage from the public during his tenure as speaker.

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“Kevin McCarthy, despite claiming doing so would be too dangerous, could have kept his promise to release the footage to the American people,” Giglio said in a press release posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Doing so could have dismantled the Democrats' narrative and ended the DOJ's Stalin-esque witch hunt nearly a year ago.”

Giglio, who lost a congressional bid for the state’s 13th District in 2022, said McCarthy keeping the recordings private permitted the “Department of Justice and the FBI to operate with unchecked authority, akin to the Gestapo” and incarcerate “individuals without due process and subjecting them to Third World show trials in front of radical activist judges and tainted DC juries.”

Days after McCarthy was elected House speaker in January, he said he’d be willing to release private security footage from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. However, his motives came under fire when he shared over 40,000 hours of raw security footage with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson in February. Carlson repeatedly downplayed the insurrection, depicting the deadly riot as "mostly peaceful chaos" when he first aired part of the footage. Carlson was fired from the network in April.

McCarthy told reporters at a March press conference that he did not regret sharing the footage with Carlson, saying, “I said at the very beginning, transparency. And so what I wanted to produce for everybody is exactly what I said. The people could actually look at it and see what’s gone on that day.”

Under McCarthy’s speakership, the footage was never made public, but his successor, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), announced last week he’s moving to put over 40,000 hours of tapes on a public website.

Winning praise from Republican lawmakers and former President Donald Trump, Johnson said the decision “will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials."

In addition to calling for McCarthy’s censure, Giglio said all those in prison for crimes related to Jan. 6 should be released and pardoned. Giglio said several members of the Jan. 6 House select committee should be removed from Congress for “ lying to the American people and wasting our tax dollars on this political witch hunt.”

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“Republicans in Congress should demand accountability from the former Speaker through a formal censure, ensuring that all those entrusted with the role in the future prioritize truth and justice over political gain,” Giglio said.

The Washington Examiner reached out to McCarthy's team for comment.