Fox News’s Tucker Carlson is explaining why he used his show to accuse the National Security Agency (NSA) of spying on him, saying he “had no choice.”
While speaking with Lisa Boothe for her podcast, “The Truth with Lisa Boothe,” Carlson discussed his reasoning behind his decision.
“So, like, getting on TV and saying the government spying on me was, you know, I did not want to do that at all, but they were spying on me and I felt like I had no choice. I mean, I did it defensively, you know? I mean, I don’t, I don’t have any other — I don’t have subpoena power,” Carlson said in a preview clip obtained exclusively by Mediaite.
He added, “I can’t arrest anybody. I can’t make them answer questions. All I can do is talk about stuff, um, with the megaphone of the show in the hope that that will, you know, protect us, but I really felt threatened by it.”
During his show on June 28, Carlson said he heard from a “whistleblower from within the U.S. government” who warned him the NSA is monitoring his electric communications and “is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.”
In a statement on June 29, the agency denied the allegations.
“This allegation is untrue. 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 statement said.
Earlier this week, Carlson then accused the agency of wanting to paint him a “disloyal American, a Russian operative” and also confirmed he reached out to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Carlson told his audience he learned on Tuesday “sources in the so-called intelligence community told at least one reporter in Washington what was in those emails.”
He concluded his show, arguing, “You can’t have a democracy in a place where unaccountable spy agencies keep people in line by leaking the contents of their emails, discrediting them with their own emails, which they thought were private. It doesn’t work if you allow that.”