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Tucker Carlson accuses Biden administration of spying on his texts and emails

Carlson files Freedom of Information Act with NSA, requesting information

Shweta Sharma
Tuesday 29 June 2021 13:40 BST
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Tucker Carlson accuses Biden administration of spying on his texts and emails
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Fox News host Tucker Carlson has accused the Biden administration of spying on his texts and emails in an attempt to take his show off the air.

The host of the conservative news channel claimed a “whistleblower” from within the US government warned him that the National Security Agency is snooping on him.

"Yesterday, we heard from a whistleblower within the US 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 effort to take this show off the air," Carlson claimed on Monday night.

He did not offer evidence to support this claim, other than saying that Fox News has “confirmed” the information relayed to them by a government whistleblower.

“The whistleblower, who is in a position to know, repeated information back to us 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 for that information,” he said.

"Now, that’s a shocking claim, and ordinarily we’d be skeptical because it is illegal for the NSA to spy on American citizens. It’s a crime. It’s not a third world country. Things like that should not happen in America," Carlson said.

Talking about the whistleblower, he said the person is in a “position to know” within the US government. “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 said.

Carlson said his team has filed a Freedom of Information Act, requesting the information the NSA and other federal agencies have gathered about him and his show.

He said “spying on opposition journalists is incompatible with democracy.” Carlson warned people that if it was happening to him then it would certainly be happening to others.

“This is scary and we need to stop it right away,” he said.

His allegation about NSA came after he repeated his claims that FBI agents were involved in organising the riots on the Capitol Hill on 6 January, a claim that has been labeled as a “bizarre conspiracy theory” by Media Matters For America. The Biden administration is yet to respond to Carlson’s claims of spying.

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