MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is threatening to sue House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over the release of thousands of hours of footage from the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Mr. Lindell said the arrangement to release the footage exclusively to Mr. Carlson is a violation of the freedom of the press provision of the First Amendment and the equal protection clause under the Fourteenth Amendment.
“We’re not gonna sit back and let that happen,” Mr. Lindell said Thursday in an interview on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast.
“Why does just Fox get this? So they can cover it up even more? It’s disgusting,” he said. “All of us, including War Room, we all need to see what’s on those tapes, and we need to see all of them.”
Mr. McCarthy, California Republican, gave Mr. Carlson exclusive access to nearly 41,000 hours of footage from the riot as part of a transparency pledge to Republican holdouts who opposed his speakership.
Democrats ripped into Mr. McCarthy following the release, accusing the speaker of jeopardizing lawmakers’ safety.
“The speaker is needlessly exposing the Capitol complex to one of the worst security risks since 9/11,” Mr. Schumer, New York Democrat, said in a letter to his Democratic colleagues. “The footage Speaker McCarthy is making available to Fox News is a treasure trove of closely held information about how the Capitol complex is protected, and its public release would compromise the safety of the Legislative Branch and allow those who want to commit another attack to learn how Congress is safeguarded.”
Mr. Schumer said Mr. McCarthy’s choice of Mr. Carlson “laid bare that this sham is simply about pandering to MAGA election deniers, not the truth.”
“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,” he wrote. “Period. Full stop.”
Mr. McCarthy defended his decision on Wednesday.
“I promised,” the speaker told The New York Times. “I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”
-Ramsey Touchberry contributed to this story.
