The White House is downplaying Fox News host Tucker Carlson‘s claims that President Joe Biden’s administration is spying on him.
Carlson revealed to his prime-time show’s viewers that a government whistleblower is alleging the National Security Agency hacked into his staff’s electronic communications and is “planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air.”
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But while White House press secretary Jen Psaki directed reporter inquiries to the intelligence community, she questioned Carlson’s accusations.
“The NSA, as I think you’re well aware, I’m sure everyone’s aware, or 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, so that is their purview,” Psaki told reporters Tuesday on Air Force One en route to Michigan.
Carlson did not provide evidence, other than that the whistleblower was aware of details regarding a story that came from his own text messages and emails. Emphasizing that “it is illegal for the NSA to spy on American citizens,” he said his team had filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking all information the NSA and other agencies have on his show. They had also contacted the NSA and FBI press offices for comment, he said.
“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 added.
Biden promised last month not to ask for reporters’ communication records, describing the practice as “simply, simply wrong.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland met with New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN executives this month after the Justice Department advised some of their reporters that former President Donald Trump’s administration had obtained their phone and email logs with court approval.
“He was always alarmed by the way the former administration, the Trump administration, abused their power, and in some cases, the career nonpartisan civil servants often were doing their work with great professionalism and honor and were put in a difficult position,” Psaki said at the time, referring to Biden.
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Obama-era Attorney General Eric Holder prosecuted nine unauthorized leak cases, more than every previous administration combined. Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, led a crackdown, too, contending that his department had more than tripled investigations into unauthorized disclosures.
