MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell stated on Thursday that he will sue House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) for sharing footage of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot exclusively with Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Lindell stated that McCarthy violated the First Amendment’s freedom of the press provision and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by only sharing the footage with Carlson and that the speaker’s decision represented discrimination, resulting in Lindell’s streaming platform, Lindell-TV, being “injured by not having access,” he said on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast.
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“We’re not gonna sit back and let that happen,” Lindell told Bannon, a former White House chief strategist. “Why does just Fox get this? So they can cover it up even more? It’s disgusting. All of us, including War Room, we all need to see what’s on those tapes, and we need to see all of them.”
McCarthy agreed this week to hand over 41,000 hours of surveillance footage to Carlson’s crew, which includes camera access from several angles on the Capitol grounds during the riot. Excerpts from this footage are expected to be aired on Carlson’s show over the coming weeks.
McCarthy has defended his decision to release the footage exclusively to Carlson, saying that he “promised” to do so.
Democrats have condemned McCarthy for his decision, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) accusing Carlson in a letter of promoting pro-Russian propaganda and arguing that the videos could pose a safety threat. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has also spoken negatively of McCarthy’s choice of sharing the footage, saying Carlson creates “grave security risks” to the Capitol complex.
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“Giving someone as disingenuous as Tucker Carlson exclusive access to this type of sensitive information is a grave mistake by Speaker McCarthy that will only embolden supporters of the Big Lie and weaken faith in our democracy,” Schumer wrote in a letter. “Let me be clear, the Senate strongly objects to the release of this sensitive security footage to Tucker Carlson and Fox News. The speaker — nor any elected official — does not have the right to jeopardize the safety of senators nor Senate and Capitol staff for their own political purposes. Period.”
Several news outlets, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, Politico, the Associated Press, NBC News, CNN, and Axios, among others, have demanded access to this footage. McCarthy previously said he plans to release the footage more widely after Carlson’s crew is done sifting through it, though it is not clear when exactly that will happen.
