U.S. fires back at claim that Tucker Carlson footage was withheld
The Justice Department has fired back at a bid by defense attorneys to have the seditious conspiracy case against the far-right group Proud Boys thrown out based on footage of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot aired by television personality Tucker Carlson.
A lawyer for Proud Boys defendant Dominic Pezzola filed a motion to dismiss the case last week, citing Carlson’s show as he argued that prosecutors withheld surveillance footage from the riot and concocted “a lie” that an insurrection occurred that day in 2021.
The move emboldened other Jan. 6 supporters to call for widespread review and reversal of cases, such as the one involving Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon Shaman” who pleaded guilty in 2021 to obstructing Congress and was sentenced to 41 months in prison. Carlson had shown footage of Chansley, the face-painted, horn-hatted supporter of Donald Trump, walking calmly through the Capitol halls with officers sometimes following him. The TV host argued that the videos show that Chansley was nonviolent and over-prosecuted by the government, and Chansley’s former defense attorney alleged the footage had not been provided as it should have been.
Prosecutors responded that all but 10 seconds of Capitol surveillance footage, including the clips played by Carlson, had been released to Pezzola, Chansley and all defendants in September 2021. The clips shown by Carlson “are not exculpatory of Pezzola or any other participant in the siege of the Capitol,” prosecutors Jason McCullough and Conor Mulroe wrote.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/14/tucker-carlson-jacob-chansley-proud-boys/
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