The Fox News host last week alleged that the National Security Agency, NSA was monitoring his private communications in an effort to force his show off-air. He claimed that Biden administration officials planned to leak embarrassing details to the media, to smear him.
Left-wing media talking heads mocked and dismissed Carlson claims. They declared that the Fox News host was lying.
However a new Axios report Wednesday confirms Carlson's claims.
According to the report, the Fox News host "was talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin."
Axios reports that: "U.S. government officials learned about Carlson's efforts to secure the Putin interview. Carlson learned that the government was aware of his outreach."
Apparently, Biden administration officials at the NSA intercepted Carlson's email and text messages and leaked it to left-wing media outlets.
Responding to the report on his show Wednesday, Carlson said in part:
Late this spring, I contacted a couple of people I thought could help get us an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I told nobody I was doing this other than my executive producer, Justin Wells. I wasn't embarrassed about trying to interview Putin. He's obviously newsworthy. I'm an American citizen. I can interview anyone I want and I plan to.
But still, in this case, I decided to keep it quiet. I figured that any kind of publicity would rattle the Russians and make the interview less likely to happen. But the Biden administration found out anyway, by reading my emails. I learned from a whistleblower at the NSA plan to leak the contents of those emails to media outlets. Why would they do that? Well, the point, of course, was to paint me as a disloyal American. A Russian operative. Been called that before. A stooge of the Kremlin, a traitor doing the bidding of a foreign adversary.
And of course, I'm hardly the only person who's been accused of those things in the last several years. We've seen this movie several times now. At the same moment, the Communist Chinese government increases its already stunning level of control over this country, our leaders prattle on about the threat of Vladimir Putin. He's an evildoer, they tell us. A totalitarian dictator.
Vladimir Putin does things that no American leader would even consider. He runs domestic disinformation campaigns. He lies to the public. He punishes people for opposing him, or for believing the wrong things. He even uses intelligence agencies to spy on his own citizens. Beyond the pale stuff. So no decent American would interview Vladimir Putin, at least no reporter from Fox News. That was the point they wanted to make. That's why they plan to leak the contents of my emails to news organizations. And yesterday, as noted, we learned they actually did it.
Even now, some of the media are claiming that we deserve this. Emailing with people who know Putin, are you? Of course, the NSA is watching you. That's what you get. But that's hardly the point. By law, the NSA is required to keep secret the identities of American citizens who've been caught up in its vast domestic spying operations. So by law, I should have been identified internally merely as a U.S. journalist or American journalist. That's the law.
But that's not how I was identified. It was identified by name. I was unmasked. People in the building learned who I was and then my name and the contents of my emails left that building at the NSA and wound up with a news organization in Washington. That is illegal. In fact, it is precisely what this law was designed to prevent in the first place. We cannot have intelligence agencies used as instruments of political control.
Both parties used to agree on that. Democrats were especially adamant on the point, but not anymore. So that's exactly what is happening here. We need to find out how this happened, who did it, who allowed it?
Paul Nakasone would know the answer. Paul Nakasone is the highly political director of the NSA. Paul Nakasone would have been required personally to approve my unmasking. That's how it works. Paul Nakasone should explain who asked for that unmasking and he should do it immediately.
Watch the rest of Tucker Carlson's full segment.