Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday again insisted that he is being spied on by the federal government despite the nation’s leading intelligence agency refuting his claim earlier the same day.
“Did the Biden administration read my personal emails? That’s the question that we asked directly to NSA officials when we spoke to them about 20 minutes ago in a very heated conversation,” Carlson said, referring to the National Security Agency. “Did you read my emails? And again, they refused to say … ‘We can’t tell you, and we won’t tell you why we can’t tell you.’ My emails. And the message was clear: ‘We can do whatever we want.’ “
Carlson said that a statement released by the NSA on Tuesday evening “does not deny” the allegations he made Monday night claiming he was being surveilled by the intelligence agency.
“Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the Agency and the NSA has never had any plans to try to take his program off the air,” the NSA said in a statement. “NSA has a foreign intelligence mission. We target foreign powers to generate insights on foreign activities that could harm the United States. With limited exceptions (e.g. an emergency), NSA may not target a US citizen without a court order that explicitly authorizes the targeting.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded in a similar way when asked about Carlson’s allegations.
“The NSA has, I think you are well aware, everyone’s aware, everyone on this plane is aware, I should say, is an entity that focuses on foreign threats and individuals who are attempting to do us harm on foreign soil,” she told members of the press aboard Air Force One on Tuesday. “So that is their purview, but beyond that, I would point you to the intelligence community.”
On Monday evening, Carlson said his show had been contacted by an intelligence community whistleblower who claimed the government has been monitoring his communications relative to stories he and his team have been working on in an effort to leak that information and damage him.
“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,” he said. “There’s no other possible source for that information, period.”
Carlson described his tense conversation with NSA officials on Tuesday night as “Orwellian.”