Tucker Carlson claimed Wednesday that the National Security Agency (NSA) leaked the contents of his emails to journalists as part of an effort to target his show and take it off the air.
Appearing on Fox Business’ Mornings With Maria with host Maria Bartiromo, the Fox News host and Daily Caller co-founder said that he was contacted by a journalist who read back to him the contents of his emails that he says were leaked by the NSA.
WATCH:
“Yesterday, I learned, and this is going to come out soon, that the NSA leaked the contents of my email to journalists in an effort to discredit me. I know because I got a call from one of them, saying ‘oh, this is what your email is about.’ It’s not in any way a figment of my imagination. It’s confirmed. It’s true.”
“I think more ominously, they’re using the information they gather to put leverage and to threaten opposition journalists, people who criticize the Biden administration. It’s happening to me right now,” Tucker went on to say. “There was one other person who knew I sent to email and it was my executive producer Justin Wells. That’s it and I didn’t mention it to anybody else including my wife. There’s just no possibility that anyone else could have known.”
“Yesterday, I got a call right before air at like 7:15 from a journalist who I know and I like … And he repeated back to me what’s in my email and he got it because the NSA had leaked it.”
Tucker went on to criticize his opponents who justified potential NSA spying by saying that he might have been emailing with a foreign actor.
“I’m allowed to email with anyone I want … I’m a journalist and I’m an American more importantly. It’s none of your business who I’m emailing with. If you think I’m committing a crime, then charge me with it, and if I’m not committing a crime, then please leave me alone. I have a right to communicate in private with other people.” (Psaki Refuses To Answer Question On Tucker Carlson’s Spying Claim: The NSA ‘Focuses On Foreign Threats’)
Tucker first said on his show last week that he learned through a whistleblower in the federal government that the NSA was monitoring his online communications and planned to leak them in order to target his show.
The NSA responded to the allegation in a statement, claiming that Carlson was not an “intelligence target” of the agency. However, the agency did not confirm or deny that they had read his emails.