CBS News, CNN, Politico and several other media companies want access to surveillance and police videos from the Jan. 6, 2021

CBS News is part of a group of news organizations that want to see the surveillance and police videos from the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, that U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

In a letter sent to the leaders of Congress on Friday, the media companies say that the footage McCarthy gave Tucker Carlson and Fox News should be given to other media groups as well.

The letter was sent by CBS News, CNN, Politico, ProPublica ABC, Axios, Advance, Scripps, the Los Angeles Times, and Gannett.

“If the public doesn’t have full access to the full historical record, there is a risk that an ideologically-based story about an already divisive event will take hold in the public mind, which could threaten the legitimacy of Congress, the Capitol Police, and the different federal investigations and prosecutions of crimes that happened on January 6,” wrote attorney Charles Tobin.

CBS News has asked McCarthy’s office several times for a comment on reports that more than 41,000 hours of police footage were given to Fox News.

In an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, the speaker of the House said that after Carlson uses the footage, he plans to make it available to more people.

“I was asked about these tapes by the press, and I said that they belong to the people of the United States. I think that when the sun is out, everyone can make up their own minds, “McCarthy said.

Tobin told McCarthy in the letter that his “sunshine” statement was supported by the media.

“Now that the CCTV videos have been given to a news outlet whose show is considered opinion programming by its own network, they must be given to the rest of the news outlets as well,” Tobin wrote.

The news has caused a lot of trouble on Capitol Hill. In a letter to his colleagues, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Carlson a “FOX News personality who often spreads conspiracy theories and pro-Putin rhetoric.”

A House Democrat who was at a Democratic Party caucus meeting where the video release was discussed told CBS News that McCarthy’s decision raises “deep, deep concerns” about security. The Democrat, who spoke on behalf of the Democratic caucus but asked to remain anonymous, said that House members don’t know if Carlson’s team was not allowed to take pictures of the videos or if they were watched while watching the videos.

In a statement, the head of the U.S. Capitol Police said, “When Congressional Leadership or Congressional Oversight Committees ask for things like this, we must give it to them.”

But there are worries that releasing only parts of the video could show where the cameras are and where security holes are.

Aquilino Gonell, a former U.S. Capitol Police Sergeant, told CBS News, “If Speaker McCarthy really wants to be open, he would have given the videos to all news outlets, not just Fox News.”

McCarthy hasn’t said much about the video being made public. In a story that came out Wednesday in The New York Times, McCarthy said that he had “promised” to release the video. Early in January, a group of far-right House Freedom Caucus conservatives stopped McCarthy from becoming House speaker. Some of the things the group got from McCarthy are still hard to understand.

Some members of the House Republican Conference have tried to downplay the violence and actions of January 6 by calling the people who were arrested “political prisoners.” Rep. Andrew Clyde, a Republican from Georgia, called the attack on January 6 a “normal tourist visit” in the House in 2021.

Carlson has repeated some of the Republican arguments that the Capitol siege is not that big of a deal on his nightly Fox News show.

Carlson said on his show on Monday, “We’ve been there about a week. Some of our smartest producers have been there looking at this stuff and trying to figure out what it means and how it contradicts or doesn’t contradict the story we’ve been told for two years.”

“We think that it already goes against that story in some ways,” Carlson said.

Fox News didn’t answer when asked for a comment.

A similar group of media outlets was able to get the Justice Department to release some video court exhibits in the Jan. 6 cases. These included footage from police body cameras and surveillance cameras that showed violence and attacks on police. The media coalition has been given hours of footage that was given to or shown in open court at the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. The footage has helped prosecutors get hundreds of guilty pleas and partial or full convictions in almost every jury trial in U.S. Capitol cases.

The Justice Department is still trying to stop people from publicly testifying and being questioned about where Capitol Police surveillance cameras are.

In a felony case against a Florida man accused of rioting, the agency said, “The surveillance system used by the U.S. Capitol Police also plays an important and ongoing role in protecting Congress and, by extension, national security. In particular, access to and sharing of the footage from the system are limited and controlled.”