Tucker Carlson claims the CIA read his text messages and is now pushing the Justice Department to charge him as an unregistered foreign agent, a move he says stems from his outspoken opposition to the war on Iran.
The ex-Fox News star posted a five-minute video to X on Saturday night laying out his account. The charge, he said, would fall under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a 1938 law that requires people paid by foreign governments for lobbying or political advocacy to register with the Justice Department.
Carlson says he was never paid by anyone.
Carlson laid it out in blunt terms:
"The CIA is preparing some kind of criminal referral against me, a crime report to the Department of Justice, on the basis of a supposed crime I committed."
The supposed crime? Communicating with people in Iran in the month leading up to the war. Carlson said the CIA obtained and read his text messages from that period, then used what they found to build a referral, as Mediaite reports.
"What's that crime? Well, talking to people in Iran before the war. They read my texts."
He dismissed the legal merits outright, calling the case "ludicrous" and saying he does not expect it to go anywhere. He also flatly denied any foreign entanglement, saying he has never taken money from a foreign power. When he addressed the idea of foreign payments directly, he was succinct: "Don't need it, don't want it."
"I'm not an agent of a foreign power. Unlike a lot of people commenting on U.S. politics and global affairs, I have only one loyalty and that's the United States and have never acted against it."
Carlson offered his own theory for why the intelligence community is coming after him: his views on Israel. He has been sharply critical of the joint U.S. and Israeli strikes that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in recent weeks, calling Operation Epic Fury "absolutely disgusting and evil" and arguing it was waged strictly on behalf of Israel.
That kind of talk does not make you popular at Langley.
Carlson suggested his criticism of Israel painted a target inside the CIA, saying there are "some people who are mad at me for my views about Israel and they have some latitude." He also pointed to a broader pattern in how the intelligence community operates, arguing that criminal referrals serve a dual purpose: they don't just initiate prosecutions, they justify surveillance warrants.
"One of the reasons they pass on criminal complaints in effect to law enforcement is to justify warrants for spying. And so that is an absolutely real thing."
In other words, Carlson believes the charge may be less about prosecution and more about permission. Permission to dig deeper, monitor more, and send a message to anyone else thinking about dissenting loudly on foreign policy.
Whatever one thinks of Carlson's claims, they arrive against the backdrop of a very public break with President Trump. The New York Times reported that Carlson met with Trump three times in the month leading up to the war on Iran, lobbying against an attack. Trump did not follow his advice.
The president has since distanced himself from Carlson in no uncertain terms. On March 5, Trump told ABC's Jonathan Karl:
"Tucker has lost his way. I knew that a long time ago, and he's not MAGA. MAGA is saving our country. MAGA is making our country great again. MAGA is America first, and Tucker is none of those things. And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that."
Earlier this month, Trump told ABC's Rachel Scott that when it came to the strikes on Iran, "If anything, I might've forced Israel's hand."
The split is real, and it matters for context. Carlson is not making these claims from within the protective orbit of the administration. He is out in the open, without political cover, accusing the intelligence apparatus of retaliating against a private citizen for his speech.
Carlson argued that countries become more authoritarian during wartime, and that the U.S. intelligence community has a well-worn habit of leaking stories to "humiliate and terrify" its enemies. If his account is accurate, even partially, the sequence is worth examining:
You don't have to agree with Carlson's views on Iran or Israel to find that sequence troubling. The Foreign Agents Registration Act exists for a reason: to expose genuine covert influence by foreign governments on American policy. It was not designed to criminalize a commentator's text messages because he held an unpopular opinion about a military operation.
If the standard for a FARA investigation is "talked to people in a country we later bombed," then every journalist, diplomat, and think-tank fellow in Washington should be checking their inboxes.
Carlson himself said he doubts the case will materialize. No official confirmation of the referral has emerged from either the CIA or the Justice Department. What exists, as of now, is one man's account, delivered to his audience on social media.
But the accusation alone carries weight. It names the specific mechanism: FARA. It names the specific agency: the CIA. And it names the specific predicate: reading his texts. Those are concrete enough claims to be verified or debunked, and they deserve scrutiny in both directions.
The intelligence community spent years weaponizing process against political figures it found inconvenient. If the apparatus is now turning that machinery on commentators who criticize wars in progress, the implications reach far beyond Tucker Carlson.
Dissent during wartime is not espionage. The CIA should know the difference.