Members of Congress consistently vote in favor of mass surveillance programs because they’re “terrified” that intelligence agencies will plant “kiddie porn” on their computers if they speak up, American journalist Tucker Carlson has claimed.
Carlson appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast on Friday, hours before the US Senate voted to renew Section 702 of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Ostensibly created to allow intelligence agencies such as the FBI and CIA to surveil the communications of foreigners, Section 702 allows these agencies to access data ‘indirectly’ collected from millions of American citizens without a warrant.
According to Carlson, a number of lawmakers actually opposed this renewal, but did not admit this publicly.
“People don’t say that because they’re worried about being punished,” Carlson told Rogan. “They’re worried about someone putting kiddie porn on their computer. Members of Congress are terrified of the intel agencies. I’m not guessing at that. They’ve told me that, including people on the [intelligence] committee, including people who run the intel committee.”
“They’re afraid of the agencies,” he stated, adding: “That’s not compatible with democracy.”
“It’s playing out in front of everyone, and no one cares and no one does anything about it,” Carlson continued. “I think the reason is because they’re threatened. And if you look at the committee chairmen who allowed this s**t to happen year after year… I know them. And they have all the things to hide. I know that for a fact.”
Apart from the supposed threat of surreptitiously-planted child pornography, Carlson claimed that it’s “very common” for lawmakers to have “a drinking problem or a weird sex life,” which agencies could easily expose if these politicians refuse to do their bidding.
Carlson is not the first influential conservative to claim that elected representatives are being blackmailed. Back in December, Tennessee Representative Tim Burchett, a Republican, suggested that his colleagues opposed a motion to release the names of notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s clients because they would have been implicated in sex crimes.
Unnamed forces in Washington use “the old honey pot” to blackmail politicians and force them to “vote for crazy stuff,” he told conservative podcast host Benny Johnson at the time.
A year earlier, a nude video of Rep. Madison Cawthorn was leaked a month after he claimed to have been invited to drug-fueled orgies by older members of Congress. Washington, he said at the time, is rife with “sexual perversion.”