ORLANDO, Fla. — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opened up over 42,000 hours of U.S. Capitol footage from Jan. 6, 2021, to all media outlets to view, but the public must wait a little longer before they can see the security video from the day of the riot.
Mr. McCarthy gave exclusive access of the tapes to Fox News Channel earlier in the month, specifically to host Tucker Carlson and said he would allow broader access to the rest of the press and the public.
The latter, though, will have to wait.
“This is the challenge. The Democrats told us it was only 14,000 hours of tapes, lo and behold, we take the majority and it’s 42,000 hours, so that would take me years to go all the way through,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters at the House Republican retreat Sunday.
“We’ve worked with the Capitol Police [to] tell us about [any] section that there was a problem. And that takes a long time. But we want to make sure everybody has the opportunity to come and see what they want,” he said. “So we’ve created the process to make that start happening.”
Democrats and Republicans who oppose former President Trump slammed Mr. McCarthy for even letting Mr. Carlson see the footage.
However, the California Republican promised he would allow access to the footage to the rest of the media as well as the public.
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.