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Will Tucker’s Access to J6 Video Make a Difference?
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has granted exclusive access to producers from Tucker Carlson Tonight to review “all” of the January 6 video stored by the House. This is being touted as a bombshell event that will finally get at the truth of the January 6 event as a set-up by Progressive actors in Congress and the Deep State. But will it?
I don’t think so. And there are four reasons:
- It is not clear whether the producers will see all of the video, and even if they do there will be limits on broadcasting portions of the video if it is determined by Speaker McCarthy as revealing security measures that are deemed too sensitive for disclosure.
- Of necessity, the public will see video clips when and if they are broadcast, therefore, there can always be claims that the editing misrepresents what happened.
- Portions of the country will automatically believe that whatever Tucker says or claims is a lie; many of us who agree with Tucker directionally are aware that sometimes Tucker overclaims.
- Progressives (including their media allies) famously “project” that conservatives will do or are doing exactly what Progressives have done or would do. That is, if the Democrat January 6 Committee Report was a put-up job (and it was), so, too, it will be claimed, is Tucker’s report.
If video shows (and it does) that Capitol police officers held the door for the “paraders” was that because there was a plan to entrap the “paraders” or was it a reasonable response to the threat of a mob? Video will not resolve that question. Only testimony from individuals, recordings of communications traffic, and information that proves or refutes a government plan to foment and entrap, will change the Progressives preferred narrative. And enough Republicans bought into at least part of the narrative that there is personal political peril from having the narrative completely debunked. Speaker McCarthy is amongst them. This is a recipe for strategic ambiguity.
In other words, when Tucker’s series is through — whenever that is — we will all be pretty much where we were before Tucker’s producers got access. Even if or when other media get access, it will simply be “wash, rinse, repeat.”
I wish it were not so. But there it is.
Published in General
I fear you are right.
My assumption that by giving the video to Tucker, McCarthy was passing the buck and avoiding a necessary Congressional investigation. Though I admit that’s a little odd, because who in Congress doesn’t enjoy holding a hearing at which they can grandstand and deploy soundbites they can use in campaign ads?
But yeah . . . by giving it to Tucker, he is allowing the left to set the narrative. (The right already has the narrative and more video isn’t necessary. We’ve been seeing video of cops opening the doors, removing barriers, and happily conversing with citizens walking between velvet ropes since January 7th, 2021.)
Will the collaboration of a politician and a journalist lead to truth being the winner on the day? Let me think…
Exactly. And the people we need to convince to back off on the prosecutions will always believe that Tucker cherry picked the footage.
I can’t imagine what anyone hoped to gain from this.
I would be a little apprehensive about Congress granting such an exclusive privilege to a single news outlet, regardless of which news outlet it is. It basically means they’re deputizing Tucker Carlson as an agent of Congress, if not the government.
Make the footage public domain or GTFO.
I understand Tucker’s crew is prohibited from removing or copying the videos, but I am not aware of any gag order. Nothing that would prevent their alerting defense teams for J6 defendants, or others with an interest such as the families of those who died that day, of specific content that could be relevant and probative in wrongful death actions or defenses against criminal prosecution. It’s kind of late for many, but I would still hope some light can be shed on the events of that day in the interest of justice.
I suspect it won’t answer important questions and will raise many new ones. Sigh.
As a rule, I’m in favor of “sunlight.” Put it out there. Let people see as much of it as possible.
The best, really, would be to do what David Daledien (bless him) did with the Planned Parenthood videos: Make a properly edited film, but put all the video on line, including boring walks down hotel hallways, nauseating teeter-totter footage as the camera gets carried down stairs and meaningless chitchat with passers-by, to make it obvious to any honest observer that the editing did not alter the relevant content.
41,000 hours of video is an awful lot of video, though.
Still, I think Tucker is pretty smart (did I mention he has a house in Maine? Which makes me like him?) and he’s got smart people working for him. He’ll know that the stakes are high.
The anxiety the announcement that the footage was going to be released is, in itself, revealing and potentially disinfecting?
How can he air them if he doesn’t copy them? That’s interesting.
They can share notes as to where something is located on the videos without copying them. I am not talking about his airing them, but saying, for example, that a criminal defendant can force disclosure of exculpating footage under Brady rules.
Any defense lawyers lining up for a producing job with Tucker? Just ask’n.
Actually, now that I think about it, that’s probably a bad idea, if only because what footage is available has been used by the left to track down anyone who was at the protests. There are people who spend their days poring over all J6 video, trying to identify innocent Americans and then siccing the FBI on them.
If we want more of those celebratory “Look! 374 more people arrested! Whee! Death to insurrectionists!” threads, then yeah, sure, make them all public.
Well better to have this footage than to not have it.
The fact that the video footage needs to be augmented by actual witness testimony and as well how there needs to be full examination of who it is that got killed by whom, as well as who it is who was arrested and then found guilty in a kangaroo court, does not mean that the video footage itself is irrelevant.
And one very good piece of news:
J6er Griffith (Griffin?) Couy was successful today in his bid to have his trial occur outside of the Washington DC court system, as there is no way he or any other J6er gets a fair trial within that sewer system of prejudiced Dem reptiles.
This change of venue ruling sets a significant precedent for the other J6ers.
5. I read somewhere the video has redacted sections . . .
How about a J6 Amnesty Act of 2023 that provides that existing convictees are pardoned and that all future persons will be pardoned on condition that they allocute (make a formal legal statement) outlining any action they committed with respect to the breach of the Capitol on January 6 including any federal employee or law enforcement officer who infiltrated groups in furtherance of a scheme to provoke an event to discredit the beliefs of that group. Anyone who does not allocute will not be pardoned and may be convicted of a crime if investigation later reveals their involvement.
Yes, I read something like that, too — hence my “all” in quotes. The initial reports of McCarthy’s releasing video were great. All the details since the initial reports have been not so much.
It was smart to release it to Tucker initially. The lamestream media are already demanding to see it in response. If it had been given to everyone, there would have been a collective “nothing to see here” on the left, and it would have been buried. But now Tucker will get some things out there that the left will have to respond to.
Never once has the left ever been called to account. Won’t start now.
I would have liked it if he also given access to the N.Y. Post.
Or, now that I think about it, the Daily Mail.
Defense counsel for Jan 6th defendants has had access to the video database for some time now. Still a major challenge to sort through it all, though that’s a problem for prosecutors as well. Prosecutors in some cases might rather hold off on pleas or sentencings in case some video shows a defendant committing more serious crimes than they are pleading to.
I agree, Carol. No matter what drawbacks there may be related to releasing the film footage, sunshine is nearly always the best policy. Everybody else seems to be pessimistic about it, but what is the alternative? Never getting to see this video? Is that better??
Do you have a cite for this? Or anything else? Ever?
Looks like he was sentenced in DC and the transfer is merely for his supervised release:
He is appealing to the DC Circuit and the status of that is “APPELLANT Brief due 03/23/2023. APPENDIX due 03/23/2023. APPELLEE Brief due on 04/24/2023. APPELLANT Reply Brief due 05/15/2023 [22-3042] [Entered: 02/15/2023 04:22 PM]”
Wyoming would be a great location for a J6 trial.
Actually the Left and their main leader, Hillary Clinton, were called to account on Election Night 2016.
Which is why they will do any and everything to ensure that this type of uprising never happens again.###
Sincere question, because IDK: is a “video database” the same as all the thousands of hours of video?
I don’t know if it is precisely co-extensive with what congress has, but I doubt it’s less. As the prosecutions commenced in 2021, investigators were inundated with video footage – security cameras, body cameras and of course, tons of footage from the protestors and rioters themselves. This stuff kept rolling in, and still is coming in to some extent.
Naturally this began to result in delays as both defense counsel and prosecutors wanted to review it for any help in their respective cases. And there were thr security concerns as previously mentioned. At some point the court set up databases for counsel to access so they could get things moving.
In most cases it’s unlikely to make a difference, of course, but obviously it could in some.
I would note that the estimates are that about 2,000 protestors entered the capitol building. Only about half that have been charged – mostly the most serious offenders (I’m sure there are some exceptions to that). So videos of people being allowed in, or peacefully walking around may, by and large, be people who are never charged.
An excellent and truly terrifying point. I’ve heard a couple of stories of kids’ maliciously “turning in” their parents. A person’s child would likely recognize a face others wouldn’t.
Your absolutely right. And it will be out there forever.
Wow.
Sounds like Stalin all over again . . .
I think this is an excellent idea.
When I look back over the second half of the twentieth century, I see so many changes in the United States that were spurred by robust protests: the end of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Acts and desegregation come to mind.
Something is incredibly screwed up in Washington.
It does to me too. Chilling.
Will it make any difference – no – esp in corporate media.
They pushed news items because they fit their narratives.
The Steele dossier was garbage and this good the NY Times the Pulitzer – you will have some in corporate media pushing this one.
Jussie Smollett “attack by the MAGA people” did not pass the smell test from the start and most of the media pushed it.
Same goes with Covington Catholic, Hunter’s laptop, The Border guards and “whips”, Mostly peaceful protests and so on.