Tucker Carlson, the conservative US political commentator, has publicly expressed fear that he may be facing criminal charges for “acting as an agent of a foreign power” by communicating with people in Iran.
The former CNN and Fox News host, who has established an alternative media career as online talking head and interviewer, claimed in a video posted on X that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was preparing “a crime report” for the Trump administration’s justice department.
“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,” Carlson said in the video.
Carlson said the crime was “talking to people in Iran before the war” and claimed – without evidence – that US government agencies have “read my texts”.
He then denied the claims that have not been levelled. “I have only one loyalty and that’s to the United States,” he said.
The Guardian has requested comment from the justice department.
Carlson has questioned US support of Israel, which the US started war with in Iran in late February. That has moved him from the center to the fringe of US conservatism.
Earlier in February, Carlson had entered into a dispute with Donald Trump’s US Israeli ambassador, Mike Huckabee, who appeared to assert that Israel has a biblical right to take over most of the Middle East.
Huckabee said Carlson appeared to be “insinuating that the Jews of today aren’t really same people as the Jews of the Bible”, adding that he didn’t previously know about the theory “because it comes from some of the darkest realms of the internet and social media”.
Carlson’s latest claim points to deepening fissures within Trump’s once united Maga movement as some of its former stars break with the president over the war in Iran as well as other issues.
Beside Carlson, that includes Megyn Kelly, Steve Bannon, and former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Kelly, for instance, recently rebuked US senator Lindsey Graham – a South Carolina Republican – for his support of the Iran strikes, with the ex-Fox News host calling him “a homicidal maniac with a bloodlust that is insatiable”.
The host of Megyn Kelly Show podcast (which has 4.2 million subscribers) said on a recent episode that “there’s nothing unpatriotic or unsupportive of one’s conservatism or general adherence to Maga-type principles to say: ‘I would like to be better convinced that this is worth the sacrifice of American blood and treasure.’
“That’s where I am. That’s where a lot of people are.”
Greene has said the Trump White House and its Republican allies are “going in the wrong direction on key issues” and being “completely hijacked” by the neoconservative “establishment … we all voted against”.
Carlson’s break with Maga is perhaps the most striking, describing the decision to attack Iran as “absolutely disgusting and evil”.
“This is Israel’s war,” Carlson said on his podcast in early March. “This is not the United States’s war. This war’s not being waged on behalf of American national security objectives – to make the United States safer or richer.
“This war isn’t even about weapons of mass destruction, nukes.”
Carlson’s comments came after Trump and his administration have complained about they deem to be unfair media coverage of the war in Iran.
The president on 5 March also told ABC News: “Tucker has lost his way.”
“He’s not Maga,” Trump said. “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.”
Greene reacted to Trump’s remarks by responding on X: “I SUPPORT TUCKER. Trump doesn’t even know what Maga is any more and turned it into Miga,” alluding to the phrase “Make Iran great again”.
Greene continued: “Trump is not America First – he’s donor first. Tucker would beat Trump if he ran for president and Trump tried to violate the constitution and tried to run again for a third [presidential] term.”
