“It’s not like the NSA’s never lied to us. We were told that there was no bulk collection of Americans’ data. Turns out, there was bulk collection of Americans’ data,” he says.
Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) called on the House Judiciary Committee to launch an inspector general investigation into the National Security Agency’s (NSA) spying of Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson.
During the Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday discussing the Justice Department’s role in prosecuting leaks, Gaetz called for an investigation into Carlson’s claims led by the Office of the Inspector General.
“The most watched cable news host has been stating for the last several nights that the NSA has been monitoring his communications,” Gaetz said.
“And amazingly, the NSA has issued a statement that is so couched, it is functionally an admission.”
“It’s my expectation that there needs to be a greater review here. And so Mr. Chairman, I am inviting you to continue this bipartisanship,” Gaetz told House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.).
“Join me in calling for an inspector general investigation into any monitoring that the NSA or any other element of the intelligence community has engaged in relative to Tucker Carlson.”
“Because these denials, these couched denials, raise more questions than they provide answers,” he added.
“It’s not like the NSA’s never lied to us. We were told that there was no bulk collection of Americans’ data. Turns out, there was bulk collection of Americans’ data. And no one was ever held to account for that,” Gaetz said, referring to former NSA Director James Clapper’s 2013 testimony.
Carlson claimed Monday that a government whistleblower came forward to tell him that the NSA had been monitoring his electronic communications in a campaign to get him off the air.
“The whistleblower, who’s 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,” Carlson explained. “There’s no other possible source for that information, period. 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 added.
