BUCK: Let’s start with the deep state, ’cause that’s what I think you have to understand is at work here with these spying-on-Tucker Carlson allegations. I know Tucker. Clay knows him. We often appear on his show. And he’s got a lot of resonance with conservatives. I mean, he is one of the most well-known and one of most influential voices in conservative media right now.

So it’s no surprise at all that there would be people within the government, perhaps at the very top level of the Biden administration, who would jump at an opportunity to smear him or just to look for that chance to undermine him through spying in some capacity, find out some tidbit of information that could be used against him; put it out there in the public.

This is what Tucker said initially, that he had not just some reason to believe but that there were people who told him that there was spying going on, specifically against him, and there were communications he was involved in that only could have been known by some of the media entities and government entities involved through the use of the NSA’s fearsome surveillance capabilities.

This is what Tucker was saying. Now, let’s just start with a few things here. Is this credible? We had the president on this show; Clay, and I asked him, “Do you believe this?” The former president, Donald Trump, said, “Yes. It’s entirely credible,” and now, why would that matter?

Because we know that the spying apparatus of the intelligence community — which I used to work for, so I have quite some familiarity, as a former CIA officer, with how this stuff works. The spying apparatus was abused. This is a matter of fact, a fact of the matter of record against the Trump administration, against the Trump campaign.

You had the FBI deployment of informants and a full field operation against George Papadopoulos, the FISA against Carter Page, and they got away with it, folks. There was no accountability. So what was before the deep state, you may need to think of it now as just “The State,” as in the people in charge — the ones calling the shots at these organizations — are tied in directly to the Biden administration.

Clay, here’s what we’ve got from Axios, Jonathan Swan with the scoop. “Tucker Carlson was talking to U.S.-based Kremlin intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin shortly before the Fox News host accused the National Security Agency of spying on him…” Let’s just start with this. At this stage of the game, Clay, the level of credibility that you think this has, how would you describe it? Because at a minimum, something happened here, right?

CLAY: I think at this point, Buck, there is a hundred… Let’s take a step back. Initially when Tucker Carlson came on his show and told this story, there was a Blue Checkmark Brigade (as I call the woke media active on social media on Twitter in particular all day long) ridiculing the idea of Tucker Carlson’s accusations as unfounded, as an unmerited conspiracy theory.

And just based on what we heard last night in this Axios report, at a minimum, Buck — as an absolute minimum — I think it is nearly 100% certain that Tucker Carlson’s communications regarding his potential interview with Vladimir Putin were intercepted by the NSA, and they were aware of these conversations.

Now, what I would say based on my reading and based on the Axios report, it’s possible that surveillance occurred because these guys that he was interacting with were being survived in some way and they then ended up getting the correspondence through that as opposed to following Tucker.

But were Tucker Carlson’s communications surveilled by United States government? I think the basic factual analysis now out there makes that a near 100% certainty. Would you agree with that analysis?

BUCK: It’s 99% as far as I can see.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: I always leave open the possibility, right? But I’m with you in that something clearly happened, just based on the timeline. For Tucker to go out on his show and say what he did before this most recent addition to the story from Jonathan Swan and Axios, that’s one of those things, as you point out, a lot of blue checks were mocking him and saying this is crazy time.

CLAY: That’s right.

BUCK: Tucker wouldn’t do that, right? I know Tucker; you know Tucker. He wouldn’t do it unless he had really good cause to bring that out there. So now what you’ve established or what we’re talking about here and the Axios report makes pretty clear ’cause there are government sources talking to Axios about this is what would be considered, perhaps, incidental collection.

Now, there are foreigners who will be under surveillance by the U.S. government. We all know this. This is part of the national security state that we have. Sometimes there are Americans whose communications with those foreigners can be intercepted as part of the intelligence-gathering apparatus.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Those identities — and I remember this when I was inside. Those identities are very closely held and protected, because otherwise you do have active surveillance, even if it’s unintentional, of a U.S. person. Now, that’s where you get to unmasking right?

CLAY: Right. Explain “unmasking” for people out there ’cause I think there are a lot of people… You’re obviously an expert in this realm but I think there are a lot of people like me who are just kind of just casually aware of how spy craft would be going on. So let me kind of set the table and you explain what unmasking is.

Let’s say Tucker Carlson is talking, texting, emailing with someone who is representing the Russian government in some way in an effort to get Vladimir Putin on. If we are correct and this Axios report is correct and his communications are then surveilled in some way, they don’t necessarily know who is that person who is communicating with this individual that they may have under surveillance, right, this American citizen.

How, then, would they become aware of who this American citizen is, and how big of an undertaking is it, in your experience and your knowledge, to find out who that is and how appropriate is it? Kind of take us into what “unmasking” means.

BUCK: So when we’re talking about, say, an intercepted conversation — that’s one way to look at this — and you could see… You know, if you had a transcript of this, you’d be reading exactly what transpired. That’s where you’d have either U.S. Person 1 or XYZ. They just anonymize that U.S. person as part of the rules to prevent spying on Americans and give some layer of protection. Now, you know, let’s say… Think about it this way, Clay. You know, if you had called — and I know you’ve got your own Russia story that you’re gonna share in a little bit.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: But if you had spoken to Putin’s personal assistant and you said, “We would love you to come on, you know, on the radio show…”

CLAY: The Clay and Buck Show.

BUCK: Yeah. They’d be able to figure out pretty quickly, probably, who was talking right? So let’s remember that masking the identity is not as much of a protection as people might think it is. But then you get to unmasking which is where people who are at a certain level in government — and this came up during the Trump administration. Remember during the transition there were a lot of unmasking requests.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: A lot of people happening from people that were leaving government, but all of a sudden really wanted to know a lot about some unmasking. They keep a log. I mean, it’s very clear that they know who’s making these requests. So the Biden administration, if there was an unmasking of Tucker, they would know who said that they wanted to see officially who this person is.

So that’s one layer of abuse, and then you get into the layer of possible illegality. The moment that someone with access would spread this information outside of proper channels, people properly cleared, that’s a felony. And just to remind everybody, this is very similar to what happened to General Flynn, right?

General Flynn lost his job and then was the subject of an awful witch hunt by the federal government. They even continued to prosecute him after the DOJ said, “Drop these charges,” right? The Bill Barr, AG, DOJ said, “Drop the charges.” They went after General Flynn because someone leaked to the Washington Post transcript of the conversation he had with a Russian. That’s a felony. And, Clay, unsurprisingly, no arrests have been made in that leak.

CLAY: Now, here’s the other thing that I would think. And you are, like we were saying, an expert in this. What is, I think, scary about this entire process is we potentially got felonious coverage and/or spying on Tucker Carlson by the party that’s in power right now. So I just want to flip the script here on you and ask you.

What would the reaction be in the, quote-unquote, “larger media sphere” if Donald Trump had been president and Rachel Maddow were alleged to have been investigated by the NSA? This would be on the front page of every newspaper in America if somebody in the Trump administration had unmasked Rachel Maddow while she was trying to get an interview done, right?

Is there any doubt? And the reason why I’m using Rachel Maddow is I’m trying to say, “Okay, let’s presume that this wasn’t happening at Fox News, who the media all hates, and it wasn’t happening to Tucker Carlson.” Let’s presume that it is the favored child, so to speak, of the media, Rachel Maddow, on MSNBC, which is supposedly the trustworthy cable arm.

Or we could say Don Lemon or Anderson Cooper or Jake Tapper or any of those guys at CNN, right? Is there any doubt that this would be a front-page news story and that there would be a major investigation almost instantaneously going on at Congress, and that all of the Democrats in Congress — from Nancy Pelosi on down, Chuck Schumer, everybody — would be saying, “This is a direct attack upon the fundamental free press of our country; this is what a dictator would do”?

BUCK: In the roles reversed situation, they’d be demanding a special counsel I think.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: And they’d probable get it because enough weak-kneed Republicans would say, “Oh, this is about the sanctity of our democracy.”

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: They’d get a special counsel going, ’cause they’d say under a Trump White House if this has happened, “Clearly this was at Trump’s direction.” They would lie. It doesn’t matter. They’d create a narrative of direct targeting of in your example Maddow by Trump, by Trump’s people. And yet isn’t it so interesting that we never found out who leaked General Flynn’s name.

This is a dirty, dirty trick — a tool of the deep state that was used without consequence before against Trump, and now it seems like in the early stages it was being used against Tucker. Keep in mind, you know, maybe if Tucker hadn’t found out about this, this could have continued on, and all it takes is one instance of the wrong stuff gets out there and you can take a real hit.

CLAY: Question for you from an intelligence perspective: How many people would have the ability to unmask? In other words, how high up on the sort of flowchart of power does it go? In other words, could this be like a really low-level person who has the power to do this, or is this a fairly high level of clearance, security clearance-wise that would allow someone to request an unmasking?

BUCK: It’s a level of seniority where there are so many people that it would honestly be impossible and probably even reckless to try to speculate.

CLAY: Like hundreds of people would have the ability to do this?

BUCK: Honestly… (chuckling) This is one of the things, too, even when you’re in the intelligence community, they would never tell me, especially at my level back then, what the full number is. But senior level people would have the ability to do this. But this stuff is all tracked, and it’s all kept. So here’s what’s gonna happen.

They’re going to pretend that this never, never happened. They’re going to say nothing. The media is gonna just allow this to die because to get the answers to this you would need the pressure brought from day-in-and-day-out editorials and more news stories and front-page stuff. But this is all a reminder of how the narrative is shaped, right?

We’re supposed to be so concerned about an insurrection, when there was no insurrection in the first place. There was a riot that’s been exaggerated. And now we’re at a place where they’re using this, the regime in power, not sort of deep state leave-behinds; that’s what you had under Trump.

Now the people in charge who are tied into this White House might be doing secret police stuff, authoritarian-style tactics against their perceived political enemies. That should trouble everybody. But the fact that… Did you see, Clay, the media went from, “Oh, Tucker’s crazy! They’re not surveilling him,” to, “Eh, he was talking to Russians! You get what you deserve. Maybe he’s a traitor,” in the blink of an eye, in the blink of an eye. It’s unbelievable.

CLAY: I think this is a monster story. And in my opinion Republican politicians should be — in a big way, Buck — leaning on and saying, “We need an investigation into how Tucker Carlson, who is… Let’s be clear: The most-watched on many nights person in all of American politics, how his communications were swept up by the NSA. Like, this is chilling to me. And I’ll talk about when we come back the chilling power of Russian surveillance that I have experienced. And we’ll talk about this larger deep state threat, I think. But first, Buck, what you got for us?

BUCK: Dasvidaniya, comrade.

CLAY: (laughing)

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We are discussing all the craziness that is going on right now with Tucker Carlson, it appears, being surveilled by our own national intelligence community. Tucker talked about this on his show last night. Play it for everybody.

CARLSON: I have learned in the last week that in Washington the fact that federal government is reading your emails is no big deal and you’re like a nutcase for even noting it or being bothered by it. There’s no expectation of privacy whatever. But I think — and you would know, but the federal law is pretty clear on this — if NSA captures information sent privately by an American citizen, they have to keep that citizen’s identity secret unless they go through a process to, quote, “unmask” it. So it seems very clear to me that they did exactly what they’re not allowed to do.

CLAY: That is Tucker Carlson. You know a little bit about this, Buck Sexton. Would you agree with the statements that he made that we just played?

BUCK: Yeah. I think Tucker knows he’s on a big story here about himself, right? But it’s real. And I think it’s so fascinating to watch how the media apparatus, the corporate-Democrat media doesn’t come to his defense. You know, they will not defend him. It doesn’t matter what happened.

They could send, you know, Roger Stone-style 30 agents into Tucker’s home in the middle of the night, you know, armed with long guns because Tucker was speaking to Russians and treason and insurrection. And the Washington Post would say, “He probably deserves it.” That’s where we are.

CLAY: I think you’re right, and I think that’s unfortunate, and that’s why I keep saying that the precedents matter here. Content needs to be applied evenly no matter the politics.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

CLAY: We are breaking down what I think is a monumentally large story that is going to be ignored — go figure — by many people who are in our industry, even though if it were Rachel Maddow instead of Tucker Carlson being targeted, there would be riots in the media streets. They would be…

Especially if it had happened obviously during the Donald Trump administration, they would be losing their minds over surveillance of media figures. But it happens with Joe Biden as president to Tucker Carlson, and they pretend first that it’s a crazy conspiracy theory.

As it has now become clear that there is in fact surveillance going on, if you look at the evidence and the data that, has been provided. Now they’re saying, “Oh, well, it’s pretty much deserved. It’s Tucker Carlson, no matter what happens to him, we don’t care. He’s not a real member of the media.” Last night this is the conversation that Tucker had with Glenn Greenwald.

GREENWALD: If they were doing this perfectly legally — meaning they intercepted your email communications with legal authority because you were talking either to the Russian government, which they, obviously, are allowed to spy on, or to a target in the United States who you were using as an intermediary and they learned that way that you were communicating with the Russians about the possibility of an interview with Putin — they have the legal obligation to conceal your identity and make sure that nobody knows that you were the one that was speaking to the Russians. The intelligence that they care about is that the Russians were doing something, not with whom they were speaking; so clearly there was either a failure to hide your identity as required by law which is illegal, or an attempt to unmask it after it was minimized, which also would be a crime.

CLAY: That is well said and pretty succinct, Buck. You know this area of the law and of our country’s regulations as it pertains to spying pretty well, probably better than anybody certainly who is doing daily radio. I mean this is a monster story that is really kind of starting to get swept under the rug by a lot of people who want to pretend it’s not going on.

BUCK: First, on the facts, Glenn knows his stuff. And it’s fascinating, isn’t it, because he’s a man of the left, but he is a principled man of the left —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — on issues like this, and so he’ll say things even that upset… Can you imagine? (chuckles) I know people who tell me that when either it’s Glenn Greenwald or other principled leftists go on Fox News, all they get is hatred for speaking the truth, right?

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: For just telling the American people what’s going on. And this should be — and I know people say this, and we all roll — people roll their eyes, “Oh, gosh.” This should be above politics.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: We should all want there to be real curbs, real blocks and restrictions on police state activity. But here’s the huge problem, Clay. And I hate having to say this. They got away with this against Trump!

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: Orange Man Bad was so bad in the eyes of leftists and Democrats that the abuses that happened, the falsification of information which did end up with a criminal prosecution within the FBI-FISA process, to go after Carter Page. I know Carter Page. I’ve talked at a Carter Page a lot. You speak to that guy for five minutes, you speak to him for five seconds.

The idea that he was the center of some Russia, Putin, steal the election conspiracy is bonkers-level madness. It was always some, you know, fever swamp dream. It was craziness. And yet they managed to do it and successfully hamper, slow down, and agitate Trump for four years based on that lie. So why wouldn’t they?

I mean, they leaked… Think about it this way. They leaked the General Flynn conversation, got him fired, got that special counsel rolling. Of course they’re gonna use the police state tactics now. And all Americans should see this for what it is, but we’re so polarized and politicized that this is what we see from journalists. “Tucker had it coming” is the attitude you get from people who are supposed to be the guardians of our republic and, you know, our fourth estate and all the rest of it. Total nonsense.

CLAY: Let me tell you my story about Russia. We are talking about this off the air before we came on. I don’t know if you have a story that’s anywhere similar to this. But I’ve been doing, obviously, national sports-talk radio for years before we came together on this show. And several years ago, whenever Vladimir Putin…

The election was going on in Moscow most recently, the producer on my radio show called me and he said, “You’re not gonna believe this,” but he said, “I was working out at the gym, my phone rings. Blocked number, no idea who it is. I pick it up, it’s someone in Russia who is inviting you to come to Russia all-expense paid to observe their elections taking place and how fair they are.”

Buck, I don’t… I still have no idea. My producer on the radio show does he have a public phone number. It’s not like we really make a deal about the fact that he should be contacted over this process. I still don’t know how they managed to call him. I don’t know why they decided to invite me to Russia to observe the election of Vladimir Putin.

BUCK: I just wish… I just we had a recording of this where you could hear (impression), “This is Oleg here for…”

CLAY: (laughing) Yeah.

BUCK: “I am here for Mr. Outkick Coverage Play.”

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: We invite you to come and be our very special guest for election coverage, and Putin promises no torture, no imprisonment for you even if you say maybe not the best thing. But, you know, good food, good entertainment.” You know, I just… I wish we had the pitch. I wish we had the whole pitch.

CLAY: I mean, how crazy is that? You may think this is wild. I’m a conspirator in that I don’t believe in conspiracy theories all being, you know, true or their being regular occurrences. But is it crazy of me to think that if Tucker Carlson is having some of his text messages, emails reviewed by the NSA, is it crazy of me to think that the same thing could be happening to you and I?

BUCK: My man, Clay, (laughing) you’re currently on the Kremlin’s speed dial. Let me tell you, as somebody who’s ex-CIA and in the media, when I travel to certain countries, I know that I’m being surveilled.

CLAY: You’re being surveilled.

BUCK: I have to be careful because of the fact that there are authoritarian regimes that are absolutely watching.

CLAY: Does that make you scared at all when you see that Tucker Carlson story? Like, do you think…? So this is a big question too. Do you think Tucker Carlson is uniquely being swept up, or would you think this kind of thing could be happening to Sean Hannity, to Laura Ingraham, to Buck Sexton, to Clay Travis? How widespread could this be, in other words?

BUCK: It’s so tough to know. You’d have to know the individual communication habits and contacts of those individuals. But the fact that could not happen to one — that it would happen to somebody like that at the top level of conservative media — certainly sends a chilling effect for all of us.

To put this in the broadest possible context, we, I think, have become a bit numb in recent years because of the politicization of these police state tactics and the surveillance apparatus being weaponized against political opponents, which is what happened to Donald Trump.

That is what happened during the last administration. Full stop. We also need to see that some of knees old rules and laws and regulations, they are in place from — in some cases — decades back, and we need to be more cognizant now than ever about abuses of surveillance powers by the state. Our whole lives are online these days.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: All your financial transactions —

CLAY: Your phone.

BUCK: — your communications, your phone. We have the most sophisticated and all-encompassing surveillance apparatus. It blows away what Orwell even thought was possible back in the thirties and forties. And people are starting to say, “Well, if you’ve nothing to hide…” Wrong. That’s not the way to view it.

CLAY: It’s a great point. And, frankly, the courts are very few behind, as they often are, by the technological age that we’re in right now. For instance, something as simple as your phone, Buck. Like, if your phone gets in the hands of authorities and they’re able to search it, they can find things in your phone that they would never be able to find necessarily by searching your home, right? The Fourth Amendment and how it applies to your possessions, particularly your phone — which has basically the key to most people’s lives — it’s absolutely insane to think about how far behind our jurisprudence, our court cases are from where technology is.