“There was never any legitimate reason for this footage to remain secret,” said Fox News’s Tucker Carlson. “If there was ever a question that’s in the public’s interest to know, it’s what actually happened on January 6. By definition, this video will reveal it.”

Carlson has been granted access, by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to all 41,000 hours of video footage of the “mostly peaceful” January 6 riot at the Capitol — footage former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi kept under lock and key during the entirety of her rigged committee’s J6 investigation dog and pony show.

Carlson then hit on the obvious: “It’s impossible for me to understand why any honest person would be bothered by that.”

Of course, honest people aren’t the problem. Dishonest people are. Which brings us to California Democrat Adam Schiff, who was recently and rightly removed by McCarthy from the House Intelligence Committee. “Kevin McCarthy turned over Jan 6 videos to right-wing propagandist Tucker Carlson,” Schiff said. “A man who spews Kremlin talking points. Suggests Jan 6 was a false flag. And spreads the Big Lie. Make no mistake: This isn’t about transparency, it’s about fueling dangerous conspiracy theories.”

Ooooh. Make no mistake: This is about Schiff and his Democrat colleagues desperately trying to prebunk what Carlson uncovers on those tapes. Indeed, as former Trump Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell observed, “Schiff is always against transparency.”

It’s not just Schiff who’s against transparency, though. Get a load of this odd complaint from MSNBC’s Steve Benen: “The video tapes in question are official government materials. They don’t belong to one member, one party, or one cable channel; they belong to all of us. And yet, there’s the new House speaker, who apparently made a unilateral decision to give one controversial Fox News host exclusive access to 41,000 hours of surveillance footage.”

Strange, but during the entirety of those grotesquely mono-partisan J6 hearings, all the way up through the committee’s delivery of its one-sided report (spoiler: it was all Donald Trump’s fault), we don’t once remember Benen, or Rachel Maddow, or anyone else among Nancy Pelosi’s Praetorian Guard speaking out about how the J6 tapes “belong to all of us.”

Nor do we remember any of them shrieking when Pelosi granted access to those same “government materials” that “belong to all of us” to “one cable channel,” namely, HBO, whose “gonzo” documentarian Andrew Callaghan used it to create a predictably one-sided J6 documentary.

The truth is, Nancy and company cherry-picked the footage and made their strongest, most damning prosecutorial case with it. Now the American people will have a two-years-overdue opportunity to see what really happened — not just what the Democrats want us to think happened.

Perhaps we’ll even get some questions answered. Questions like: Why didn’t Nancy Pelosi secure the Capitol with a stronger police presence and an overwhelming National Guard presence, as Trump authorized?

And questions like: If the FBI knew in advance about the strong likelihood of a riot, why on earth didn’t the bureau stop it?

And questions like: What, exactly, was the FBI’s role in the J6 riot, and how many undercover agents were involved in ginning up the crowd and helping to orchestrate the violence?

And questions like: Who is Ray Epps, and why is the FBI being so tight-lipped about him more than two years after he was caught on videotape exhorting people to “go in to the Capitol,” and after his mug was quietly and mysteriously removed from the FBI’s most wanted list?

And questions like: Who erected the infamous Capitol gallows, which, according to the mainstream media, was going to be used to hang Vice President Mike Pence?

Again, the release of this footage is long overdue. And the delay is all on the Democrats. As independent journalist Julie Kelly reports:

In March 2021, the Justice Department designated the footage as “highly sensitive government material” subject to strict protective orders. Defendants and their lawyers have complained about lack of access to the surveillance video; a digital platform to archive all footage was delayed for months. Those protective orders, however, did not apply to House Democrats, who accessed surveillance clips to use in the second impeachment of Donald Trump and the January 6 select committee.

Carlson’s team will be busy in the coming days and weeks. But the end result will be transparency — and that’s a good thing, despite what the Democrats are telling us.