Revealing the Whole Story: The Jan. 6 Shaman Videos

THE ISSUE: Videos showing police escorting the “QAnon Shaman” around the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

• Most of the country has known for a while that the Jan. 6 Committee’s main purpose was to get former President Donald Trump, and that it would use every trick of deceit to accomplish this goal (“Tour de Farce,” March 6).

Now, thanks to Tucker Carlson, the lying has been exposed and the witch hunt debunked.

Videos of the action on Jan. 6 clearly show that one person, “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley, who was sentenced to four years in prison, was actually escorted by the Capitol Police throughout the Capitol building. Yet none of this video was given to his defense at trial, according to his attorney.

I thought that everyone in this country was allowed to have a fair trial. Obviously not in this case, as in many instances of one-sided justice against conservatives and Republicans.

Richard A. Ketay Newark, NJ

• Thanks to Tucker Carlson’s release of the Jan. 6 so-called insurrection videos to the general public, the genie has been let out of the bottle and some of the hidden swamp creatures are scurrying like rats on a sinking ship.

In their twisted and self-righteous world, the public doesn’t have a right to see both sides of a story. What chutzpah.

The videos have fully exposed what a colossal sham the Jan. 6 committee was. What a patchwork of lies.

Michael Headley Brooklyn

• So Tucker Carlson does his job as an investigative journalist by showing footage of the Jan. 6 “Capital riot” and is rejust soundingly criticized for it by Congress, the White House and the mainstream media.

It’s refreshing to see a journalist actually doing his job for once. The criticism he is facing shows how little respect politicians and the mainstream media have for the truth and the public’s right to expect it from the press and our elected leaders.

Chris Tripoulas Manhattan

• I read Miranda Devine’s commentary on March 6 (“Why Dems dread 1/6 reveal”) and the following day (“The Horn-ered Guest Shaman,” March 7).

Americans need to be asking: Why have all these newly released videos of the Jan. 6 insurrection footage been kept secret from the American people? We have a right to know everything that happened on that fateful day.

Why did the House Jan. 6 Committee only release part of the whole story and decide to focus on edited versions of the surveillance videos, which bolstered their narrative?

Kudos to Fox News for taking the veil off the whole picture of Jan. 6. It does seem obvious that only now are we seeing the whole story, and not the approved version as told by liberal Democrats.

I do not condone any of the violent behavior of Jan. 6, but please don’t pretend we barely dodged an insurrection that day.

Salvator Giarratani Boston, Mass.

• Previously “unavailable” documentation is now making it clear Jan. 6 was not a “terrorist attack.”

Agitators led a small number of those present on Jan. 6 to physically break into the Capitol. The vast majority of the huge number of people assembled on Jan. 6 were peaceful and never became violent.

Rep. Jamie Raskin actually stated that making this previously hidden documentation available to American voters was “out of Putin’s playbook.”

An accurate statement would be that not making the tapes available, except for manipulatively edited portions, may well be what Biden called the “greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War.”

Raskin seems unaware of Joseph Pulitzer’s observation: “Our republic and its press will rise or fall together.”

Julia Lutch, Davis, Calif.

• If only the Shaman was a Black Lives Matter protester — then New York City would pay him a $21,000 reward.

But he was a Trump supporter. This means hard jail time — four years. He was peaceful and injured not one person. I thought he was funny. This is an outrage. Free the Shaman.

Carol Meltzer Manhattan