CNN host John King claimed Tuesday that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was trying to get Fox News host Tucker Carlson to stop criticizing him by releasing footage of the Capitol riot.

“Kevin McCarthy is giving Fox’s Tucker Carlson access to tens of thousands of hours of January 6 security footage,” King said during “Inside Politics.” “Your tax dollars paid for most of the cameras that captured the scene inside and around the Capitol that day but Speaker McCarthy is granting access only to Carlson and to Fox. Carlson is a frequent McCarthy critic, who says the speaker has no ideological core.” (RELATED: ‘The Public Should See What Happened’: Tucker Praises Kevin McCarthy For Promising To Release Jan. 6 Footage)

McCarthy provided Carlson, a co-founder of the Daily Caller and an honorary member of the Daily Caller News Foundation board, access to over 41,000 hours of video footage of the Capitol riot, Axios reported. Previous reports indicated that the amount of footage was 14,000 hours.

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“I think the American public should actually see all what happened instead of a report that’s written for a political basis,” McCarthy said Jan. 12, shortly after his election as speaker on the 15th ballot.

Carlson called on McCarthy to release the footage Jan. 3, as McCarthy struggled to collect the 218 votes necessary to be speaker.

“After two full years, after a highly publicized and highly politicized congressional committee, after endless grandstanding in the media, after unprecedented political crackdowns, after nearly 1,000 arrests, after all of that: Americans, yes they do, have a right to know what actually happened on Jan. 6,” Carlson said Jan. 13.

King again pressed the notion that McCarthy was trying to get favorable coverage from Carlson in a second question to a panel on the show after playing a clip of Carlson criticizing the speaker.

“He said he’s not really a conservative, he’s agnostic, he, you know, flaps with the breeze. He has said worse,” King said. “Is that simply what this is? Maybe if I give this to you, you’ll be nice to me?”

CNN has published numerous stories based on anonymous sources concerning Jan. 6 committee activity, leading many to speculate the committee leaked CNN the information.

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