US President Joe Biden on Wednesday lambasted Republicans and said that they should be ashamed of supporting an effort by Fox News to play down the seriousness of the January 6, 2021 assault on Congress by a mob of Donald Trump supporters.
"More than 140 officers were injured on Jan 6. I've said before: How dare anyone diminish or deny the hell they went through?" Biden tweeted.
"I hope House Republicans feel ashamed for what was done to undermine our law enforcement," he added.
Republicans in the House are beginning to plot multiple probes into the 2021 Capitol attack, including looking into the Democratic-led select committee's actions from the last Congress, the security failures from that day and potentially even the treatment of January 6 defendants, multiple sources familiar with the work tell CNN.
The move comes as Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy green-lit the release of January 6 security footage to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sought to whitewash the severity of the attack and caused a major uproar among Senate Republicans on Tuesday.
Biden expressed support for the Capitol Hill police, whose chief has accused Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson of manipulating video footage of the unprecedented assault after Trump's election defeat.
In a statement, Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger said Carlson's show aired this week was "filled with offensive and misleading conclusions."
While top Republicans had hoped when they took over the House to steer clear of re-litigating January 6, McCarthy had to reverse course when the election left his conference with a slimmer-than-expected majority. In his bid to win the speaker's gavel, McCarthy made a number of promises to his right flank, which has been pressuring leadership to revisit the topic of January 6 under a GOP-led House.
January 6 select committee staff have been prepared for Republican-led investigations into their work and the Capitol attack, with some even getting liability insurance, reported CNN.
The Oversight Committee is expected to look into the treatment of January 6 defendants and the jail facilities where they have been detained, according to multiple sources. Far-right Republicans have long claimed that the rioters have been treated too harshly - a claim that judges have flatly rejected - and complained about the jail conditions.
However, the small subset of January 6 defendants who are currently in jail are there only because a federal judge ruled that they are either too dangerous to release or pose a flight risk.
The January 6 assault saw Trump supporters -- told for weeks by Trump himself that the election was not fair -- smashing their way through police lines and roaming through Congress. The assault forced a pause in the constitutional process of certifying Biden's election victory, while scores of lawmakers fled, fearing for their lives.
( With inputs from ANI )
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