• What Happened: Tucker Carlson posted a video Saturday revealing the CIA is preparing a criminal referral against him to the DOJ for texting people in Iran before Operation Epic Fury. The potential charge is the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
  • Why It Matters: Tucker had visited the White House multiple times lobbying Trump against striking Iran, all while texting Iranian contacts. Trump has since said Tucker "is not MAGA" and has "lost his way." Neither the CIA nor DOJ has confirmed or denied anything.
  • Bottom Line: Tucker says the case is "ludicrous" and he doubts it becomes a real prosecution. But the questions about who he was talking to, what he said, and why, are not going away.

Tucker Carlson dropped a bombshell Saturday, posting a video to X revealing that the Central Intelligence Agency has been reading his texts and is preparing a criminal referral against him to the Department of Justice.

The alleged crime, in Tucker's own words: "Talking to people in Iran before the war."

"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. "They read my texts. So the crime under consideration apparently would be the Foreign Agent Act, or something like that, acting as an agent of a foreign power."

Carlson pushed back hard on the underlying allegation. "I'm not an agent of a foreign power," he said. "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." He added that he has never taken money from any foreign government and dismissed the potential case as politically motivated. "I have no secrets to divulge. So legally, I think the case is ludicrous, and I doubt it'll even become a case."

He also pointed the finger at pro-Israel factions within the intelligence community. "There are some people who are mad at me for my views about Israel, and they have some latitude," Carlson said, explaining that criminal complaints can be used to justify surveillance warrants and then leaked to media to "humiliate and terrify" targets.

Neither the CIA nor the DOJ has issued any public statement confirming or denying a referral.

The context here is significant. Carlson had visited the White House multiple times in the lead-up to Operation Epic Fury, openly lobbying President Trump against military action in Iran, while simultaneously texting Iranian contacts. When the operation launched and Khamenei was killed, Carlson called the strikes "absolutely disgusting and evil" and accused Trump of fighting a war on behalf of Israel rather than America.

Trump responded publicly. "Tucker has lost his way," the president told ABC News. "He's not MAGA. MAGA is saving our country. MAGA is making our country great again, and Tucker is none of those things."

Conservative commentators are now debating what Tucker's Iran contacts actually involved. And the question has been raised whether the CIA was reading Tucker's texts, or if they were running surveillance on Iran and that is where they discovered the conversations being had with Tucker.

Some have floated the theory that Trump may have been aware of Tucker's backchannel and deliberately used him as an unwitting counterintelligence asset, feeding Iran the impression that no strike was coming.

Eitan Fischberfer wrote, "Here’s what appears to be happening:

1. Tucker Carlson has allegedly been conducting his own foreign policy with Iran on behalf of the United States.

2. At some point, the CIA got wind of this and informed President Trump, who may then have used Tucker as an unwitting counterintelligence asset to feed faulty information to Iran. (BASED.)

3. Following the launch of Epic Fury, Tucker’s traitorous behavior may have finally caught up with him, as DOJ reportedly prepares a criminal complaint against him based on CIA intelligence.

4. After the operation began, Iran sent IRGC agents to carry out attacks in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but those plots were foiled.

5. Iran then told Tucker these were actually Mossad plots — a claim he pushed online and that spread like wildfire.

6. Saudi and Qatar had to publicly deny Tucker's fake news about the Mossad."

If true, that would mean Tucker's conversations helped set the trap.

What is not in dispute: Tucker was texting Iranian contacts, the CIA was reading those texts, and now a criminal referral may be headed to the Justice Department of the president who just called him not MAGA.