Tucker Carlson claims NSA is spying on him
Fox News host Tucker Carlson is accusing the Biden administration of surveilling his private communications in an effort to get his show yanked from the air.
Carlson made the accusation on his show Monday night, saying he had been contacted by a whistleblower who had information that came from his texts and emails regarding a story his team was working on.
“It’s not just political protests that the government is spying on,” Carlson said.
“Yesterday, we heard from a whistleblower within the US government who reached out to warn us that the NSA, the National Security Agency, is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.”
Carlson admitted that it was “a shocking claim,” which he said he would normally be “skeptical” of because “it’s illegal for the NSA to spy on American citizens. It’s a crime. It’s not a Third World country. Things like that should not happen in America.”
“The whistleblower, who is in a position to know, repeated back to us information about a story that we are working on that could have only come directly from my texts and emails,” Carlson revealed.
“There’s no other possible source for that information. Period. They did it for political reasons. The Biden administration is spying on us. We have confirmed that.”
In response, Carlson said, he had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for all information gathered by the feds on him and his show.
“We don’t expect to hear much back. That’s the way that usually goes. Only Congress can force transparency on the intelligence agencies and they should do that immediately,” he said.
“Spying on opposition journalists is incompatible with democracy. They are doing it to us and again, they are definitely doing it to us, they are almost certainly doing it to others. This is scary and we need to stop it right away.”
The NSA did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment. Nor did the White House.
Asked about Carlson’s claims while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday morning, White House press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged that surveillance was something the NSA conducted as part of its work, but couldn’t speak to his case.
“Well, the NSA … is an entity that focuses on foreign threats and individuals who are trying attempting to do us harm on foreign soil,” Psaki said, “So, that is their purview. But beyond that, I would point you to the intelligence community.”