Fox News host Tucker Carlson told his audience on Monday that he believes the Biden administration is “spying” on him as part of an effort to take his show off the air.
He claimed a government whistleblower told his team that the National Security Agency is “spying” on their electronic communications and is “planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.”
The top-rated host in cable news said the whistleblower, whom he did not name, was able to recite information on a story Carlson’s team is working on that came from his text messages and emails.
“The Biden administration is spying on us,” Carlson claimed without offering any additional evidence.
He accused the agency of secretly accessing his electronic communications and argued that “it is illegal for the NSA to spy on American citizens.”
The host said his team filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see all the information the NSA and other agencies have collected about 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. If 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,” Carlson said.
Carlson’s accusations came just after the host did a follow-up on a segment he did earlier this month claiming that people working with the FBI helped coordinate the January 6 Capitol riot.
While legal experts have disputed the legitimacy of the claims, Carlson said language in publicly available indictments showed the FBI seemed to have “foreknowledge” of the siege.
He claimed agents have “confirmed that is true,” and quoted one FBI agent as saying, “The FBI had sources in that crowd — confidential sources, snitches. That’s 100 percent certain.”