In a shocking allegation during Monday’s show, Fox News host Tucker Carlson told viewers that a whistleblower from the National Security Agency had reached out to warn him that the agency had him and his team under surveillance. And understandably, Carlson was non-plus by the apparent revelation, declaring: “Spying on opposition journalists is incompatible with democracy.”
After noting that the FBI had known about the attack on the Capitol beforehand, Carlson declared “it’s not just political protest the government is spying on.” That’s when he dropped the shocking allegation:
Yesterday we heard from a whistleblower within the U.S. 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.
“Now, that's a shocking claim and ordinarily, we would be skeptical of it, it’s legal for the NSA to spy on American citizens, it's a crime,” he stated. “This is not a third-world country, things like that should not happen in America. But unfortunately, they do and in this case, they did happen.”
Now, anyone can send an e-mail and make allegations. But according to Carlson, the whistleblower had the recites in the form of information in his private correspondence:
The whistleblower who’s 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. There's no other possible source of that information, period.
“The NSA captured that information without our knowledge and did it for political reasons. The Biden administration is spying on us. We have confirmed that,” he added.
Doing his due diligence, Carlson divulged that his team had filed “a Freedom of Information Act request, asking for all information that the NSA and other agencies have gathered about this show,” and “contacted of the press office at both NSA and the FBI. We don't expect to hear much back, that's the way that usually goes.”
Carlson wrapped up the apparent exposure of the NSA with a call for Congress to step in:
Only Congress can force transparency on the intelligence agencies, and they should do that immediately. 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.
These allegations come after similar revelations that the Trump-era DOJ had obtained the communications of journalists in their search for leaks. And in the wake of those revelations, media types like CNN’s Brian Stelter were up in arms. Now let’s see how they act.
The transcript is below, "click" expand to read:
Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight
June 28, 2021
8:19:43 p.m. EasternTUCKER CARLSON: But it’s not just political protest the government is spying on. Yesterday we heard from a whistleblower within the U.S. 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.
Now, that's a shocking claim and ordinarily, we would be skeptical of it, it’s legal for the NSA to spy on American citizens, it's a crime. This is not a third world country, things like that should not happen in America. But unfortunately, they do and in this case, they did happen.
The whistleblower who’s 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. There's no other possible source of that information, period.
The NSA captured that information without our knowledge and did it for political reasons. The Biden administration is spying on us. We have confirmed that.
This morning, we filed a FOIA request, a Freedom of Information Act request, asking for all information that the NSA and other agencies have gathered about this show. We did it mostly as a formality. We also contacted of the press office at both NSA and the FBI. 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. 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.
