Carlson
© screenshotTucker Carlson
A newly released document reveals a wide-ranging Freedom of Information Act request from a producer for Fox News's Tucker Carlson, seeking all documents regarding alleged surveillance of the prime-time anchor by the National Security Agency and filed on June 28, the same day Carlson first made the allegations on TV.

According to a document obtained by a separate FOIA inquiry published by BuzzFeed News on Wednesday, Carlson's producer, Alexander Pfeiffer, filed the June request seeking
"any call records, texts, or emails the NSA has obtained from journalist Tucker Carlson's cell phone or email, ... any memos or documents related to surveilling journalist Tucker Carlson, ... [and] any communication between NSA officials regarding journalist Tucker Carlson."
The request was filed at 10:08 a.m., just hours before Carlson accused the NSA of "spying" on his electronic communications and "planning to leak them in an attempt to take [his] show off the air." The request asked for the release of all relevant files between Jan. 1, 2019, and June 28, 2021.

Earlier on Wednesday, Carlson expounded on his claims of the NSA spying on him, telling Fox's Maria Bartiromo he learned on Tuesday that his emails were leaked by the NSA to journalists.
"Yesterday, I learned that, and this is going to come out soon, that the NSA leaked the contents of my email to journalists in an effort to discredit me. I know because I got a call from one of them saying, 'Oh, this is what your email is about. So, it is not in any way a figment of my imagination. It's confirmed. It's true."
Carlson claimed only one other person, an executive producer, separate from the producer who filed the FOIA request, knew that he had sent the email to which the journalist was referring.

The Fox News personality said he didn't want to "say things that [he] can't prove, but this is actually true," though he presented no evidence in support of his allegations.
"And by the way, they essentially confirmed it. I had a shouting match last week with NSA officials where I has asked them point-blank. They said, 'Well, you're not a target of an investigation,' which is a term of art used in the so-called intel community, and I said, 'Stop with your BS. Were you reading my emails or weren't you?' 'Well, we're not going to respond to that.' 'Really? You're not going to tell me whether you're reading my emails. Clearly, you were. Why can't you tell me?' 'We can't respond to that,'" he said. "So, in other words, they won't answer your questions, they won't tell you why they won't answer your questions, and it's just like, 'Shut up and obey, serf.'"
After Carlson accused the Biden administration of "spying" on him in an attempt to take his show off the air on June 28, the NSA responded a day later to say Carlson "has never been an intelligence target." The NSA spokesperson said:
"This allegation is untrue. Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the Agency and the NSA has never had any plans to try to take his program off the air."
While Carlson was not a target, the NSA said, it is possible his communications were incidentally picked up while monitoring some other unnamed target.

Carlson condemned the NSA for this possibility, saying, "I'm allowed to email with anyone I want" in response to those saying he must have been emailing with threatening foreign actors. He told Bartiromo on Wednesday:
"I'm a journalist, and I'm an American, more importantly. It's none of your business who I'm emailing with. If you think I'm committing a crime, then charge me with it, and if I'm not committing a crime, then please leave me alone. I have a right to communicate in private with other people because I'm, again, an American citizen and a human being."
The FOIA case filed by Carlson's producer is currently in hold status awaiting input from the Office of General Counsel as of July 1, according to the document obtained via BuzzFeed's FOIA request.