The leading American conservative journalist Tucker Carlson has revealed that the US intelligence agencies have kept spying on him including during the days when he was visiting Russia.
On February 27, Lex Fridman had Tucker Carlson for a detailed interview lasting three hours on his podcast posted to YouTube. During the course of the conversation with Fridman, Carlson mentioned that his lawyers warned him before he left for Moscow that interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin could get him arrested upon his return to the United States over “sanctions violations.” One of the prominent lawyers, according to Carlson, told him that a lot depends on how he carries himself during the interview with Putin; appearing too nice to the Russian President could get him arrested upon returning home.
“I said you are describing a fascist country,” Carlson said to the lawyer, as he shared on the Fridman’s podcast.
Carlson then went on to say the he was being “insanely surveilled” by the US government in the past, who even admitted their surveillance, and then they spied on him again before he left for Russia to interview President Putin, and also while he was in Moscow. Carlson told that Semafor, a leftist news site, got the information from US intel sources about his meeting with Edward Snowden – the NSA whistleblower who exposed the Obama administration’s illegal spying on Americans in 2013– which he had kept secret from everyone, implying that the US intel was spying on him while he was in Russia.
Tucker Carlson has previously been vocal in sharing his story of remaining on the radar of the US intelligence and how it bothers him as a citizen of a free country. Speaking recently at the World Government Summit in Dubai, UAE, on February 12, he named NSA and CIA as the government agencies spying on him. Carlson said that the efforts to pressure him into dropping the plan to interview Putin only strengthened his commitment to journalistic freedom.
More shocking than the story of US intel keeping tabs on him was the news of an alleged plot to assassinate Carlson while he was in Russia. On Monday, February 26, Russian sources released the video of a 35-yr-old man Vasiliev Pyotr Alexeieovich wherein he is seen confessing that he was hired by the Ukraine Ministry of Defense in November 2023 for an assassination plot targeting Carlson when he would visit Russia. Elijah Schaffer of The Gateway Pundit reported on the story.
Leftist news sources tried to discredit the source of the information behind the assassination plot claim. Newsweek did a so-called fact-check on the story and wrote:
An investigation by Newsweek found no authoritative or reliable evidence to corroborate the claim, which Russian state-linked sources had disseminated.
Carlson’s interview with President Putin of Russia left the globalist media sources, politicians, and war-pushers fuming as it allowed Mr. Putin to share his views with millions of Carlson’s followers and more. Posted to Twitter/X on February 8, 2024, the video of the interview got over 200 million hits.