Early in the month, Mr. McCarthy granted Fox News Channel exclusive access to the tapes, specifically to anchor Tucker Carlson, and declared he would grant wider access to the rest of the press and the general public. Nevertheless, the latter will have to wait.
"This is the difficulty. McCarthy told reporters at the House Republican conference on Sunday, "The Democrats told us it was only 14,000 hours of tapes, lo and behold, we take the majority and there's 42,000 hours, so that would take me years to get through it all.
We've worked with Capitol Police to get information about any problematic areas. And all of that takes time. Nonetheless, we want to ensure that everyone gets the chance to come and see what they desire, he said. "So we've developed the procedure to start making it happen."
Republicans and Democrats opposed to former president Trump criticized Mr. McCarthy for even allowing Mr. Carlson to view the video.
The California Republican, though, pledged that he will let the public and the rest of the media access to the video.
