1/6 Footage to Carlson Secured Speakership -- Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) handed all 44,000 hours of video of the January 6th insurrection including security footage previously withheld to Fox News conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson as part of the congressman's deal to secure MAGA votes to become House Speaker, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) told NPR. Thompson, chairman of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, said the video footage turned over to Carlson was not part of his committee’s hearings last year because they show escape routes and the position of hidden cameras used by Capitol police for Congress members’ safety. Roughly 40,000 hours was available for the committee to show in nine public, televised hearings last year.
“It’s dangerous because some of the video we chose not to share in concert with the Capitol police because it would compromise the security of the Capitol,” Thompson told Steve Inskeep on Morning Edition. “And at no point did we want to make the Capitol more vulnerable by sharing that kind of information with the public.”
The additional footage identifies the position of certain cameras in the Capitol, which could make it more vulnerable in any subsequent attack, Thompson said. Carlson, who has hosted Fox News programs and documentaries with conspiracy theories and alternative histories of the January 6th attack, according to Inskeep, is likely to use the footage to advance those alternative histories and show his audience what the Select Committee tried to “withhold” from the American public.
Fox News appears to be the only outlet to receive the footage from McCarthy.
“I understand he had to make certain commitments to become speaker,” Thompson said, “but in no way should these commitments jeopardize the security of the United States Capitol.”
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Trump Daughter, Son-in-Law Subpoenaed -- The Justice Department’s special counsel investigating the January 6th Capitol insurrection, Jack Smith, has subpoenaed Donald j. Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, The New York Times reports. Ivanka Trump was one of the former president’s closest White House advisors during his final months in office. According to the report, Smith’s subpoenas indicate how deep inside the 45th president’s inner circle that the special counsel is getting and that “no potential high-level witness is off-limits.”
The Ivanka Trump/Jared Kushner subpoenas come two weeks after Smith subpoenaed ex-President Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, who has resisted testifying, claiming “legislative privilege” as he was president of the Senate during the administration. Though Trump’s daughter and son-in-law might be expected to fight the subpoenas themselves, the former president did not try to block them from testifying before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, last year.
--TL
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...meanwhile...
WEDNESDAY 2/22/23
UPDATE: Speaking from Warsaw, President Biden reacted to President Vladimir Putin's suspension of participation in the last-remaining U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control treaty talks; "It's a big mistake."
Biden Meets with Bucharest Nine – President Biden spoke with the Bucharest Nine (B9) about the “destabilizing” military buildup along Ukraine’s border and the need for a “united, ready and resolute NATO stance for the collective defense of allies,” before preparing to return home from Warsaw Wednesday, according to a White House readout of the meeting. Biden stressed the U.S. commitment to “close consultation and coordination” with Transatlantic allies and partners in defense of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
B9 Leaders Attending: Bulgarian President Rumen Radev, Czech Republic Prime Minister Andrej Babis, Estonian President Alar Karis, Hungarian President Janos Ader, Latvian President Egils Levits, Lithuanian President Gitanis Nauseda, Polish President Andrzej Duda, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and Slovakia Prime Minister Eduard Heger.
Where’s Orbån?: Significantly, Hungary sent its president rather than authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbån, who is considered sympathetic to, if not an outright ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It should also be noted that Polish President Duda leaned authoritarian – a sort of “Orbån lite” who has fought the European Union over his attempts to dismantle an independent judiciary – during the Trump administration and roughly up to the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine after the Russian invasion a year ago.
Biden, who has made a point during his trip to Kyiv and Warsaw that Ukraine’s resilience in the war is a victory for democracy over authoritarianism, has an 82% approval rating among Poland’s populous is 82%, according to MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
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SOTU Boosts Biden's Approval Ratings -- President Biden's approval ratings hit a new high of 46% in an NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll of 1,300 respondents taken after his State of the Union address. Biden's approval rating had sunk to a low of just 36% last July. Of the 1,300 respondents in the poll, 1,200 were registered voters who gave Biden an approval rating of 49% in the same poll, according to NPR's Morning Edition.
--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa