White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki dodged a question Tuesday about Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s explosive allegation that he is being spied on by the Biden administration.
“Tucker Carlson said that the NSA is spying on him,” a reporter told Psaki on Tuesday. “Is the administration aware of any espionage or listening efforts on U.S. citizens by the NSA, and is Tucker Carlson one of them?”
“Well, the NSA, as I think you’re well aware — I’m not sure everyone is aware — everyone on this plane is aware, I should say — is an entity that focuses on foreign threats and individuals who are trying — attempting to do us harm on foreign soil,” Psaki responded. “So, that is the — their purview. But beyond that, I would point you to the intelligence community.”
The question came in response to Carlson saying Monday night, “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.”
“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. There’s no other possible source for that information, period,” Carlson continued. “The NSA captured that information without our knowledge and did it for political reasons,” Carlson said. “The Biden administration is spying on us. We have confirmed that. This morning we filed a FOIA request — 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’ve also contacted the press office of both NSA and the FBI.”
“We don’t expect to hear much back,” Carlson said. “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. If 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.”
Carlson led into his remarks on the Biden administration spying on him by claiming the Biden administration has shifted its focus in the War on Terror.
“The Biden administration is signaling a very real change to actual federal policy,” Carlson continued. “The War on Terror, now ongoing for 20 years, has pivoted in its aims. The War on Terror is now being waged on American citizens, opponents of the regime. We saw this on display on January 6. We told you a couple of weeks ago, based on the language in publicly available indictments, that the FBI clearly had foreknowledge of the riot at the Capitol that day, and the agents we spoke to this weekend confirmed that is true: ‘The FBI had sources in that crowd — confidential sources, snitches. That’s 100% certain.’”