FNC's Carlson: FBI's Focus on 'Joe Biden's Political Opponents' a Nightmare for Civil Liberties, Threat to Democracy
Friday on FNC’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson reiterated his skepticism of the FBI and its handling of the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill.
Carlson pointed to examples of where the FBI had not been truthful in the past and asked why media outlets like CNN were so trusting of it regarding the January 6 investigation.
The FNC host said the FBI’s approach to what it is referring to as domestic terrorism endangers civil liberties and democracy in America.
Transcript as follows:
CARLSON: Way back in the fall of 2017, CNN — believe it or not — ran a pretty interesting piece on its website. We read it. It was the story of a pizza delivery driver from Dearborn Heights, Michigan called Khalil Abu Rayyan.
At the age of 21, Rayyan found himself deeply depressed and contemplating suicide. He poured out his feelings to strangers on the internet as so many young people do. He posted pictures of himself at one point with a rifle and then he suggested he might want to wage jihad.
When he did that, out of the blue, he got a response from a woman he had never heard of called Ghaada. The two never actually met in person, but over time, a very intense relationship developed.
Ghaada professed her love for Rayyan. They courted online for weeks and then one day, Ghaada stopped writing. She simply disappeared. And then a new woman took her place, this one began texting Rayyan, too.
Her name was Jannah. Jannah was not interested in romance, Jannah wanted to wage violent jihad. She told Rayyan that if he planned to kill himself, he might as well kill some infidels along with him. Quote: “When it’s jihad or when it’s based on our creed or cause, that’s the only time Allah allows it.” That’s what she wrote.
Eventually, Rayyan admitted to Jannah that he had fantasized about killing people in a church near his pizza shop, though he stressed that he would never actually do it. In fact he encouraged Jannah not to hurt anyone.
Days after he wrote that, the FBI swooped in and arrested Rayyan, and that’s when he learned that the women he’d been texting with didn’t exist. Ghaada and Jannah were fake. They were pure creations of the FBI.
The bureau had spent an entire year working to entrap a depressed pizza delivery boy and then created a honey trap to do it, but it still didn’t work. After all of that, the Fed still did not have enough evidence to file terrorism charges against him. Nothing Rayyan had said was criminal.
He could have gone free, but they couldn’t let him go free. That would be too embarrassing to the Federal government. So, they charged him with an absurd non-crime, unlawful possession of a firearm while under the influence of a controlled substance.
He didn’t shoot anyone or brandished the gun, he just had it; and for that, they sent him to prison for five years.
In all, it was a thoroughly disgraceful chapter in the history of Federal law enforcement and CNN, to its credit seemed to understand that at the time. The channel pointed out that the FBI often does more than stop crimes, sometimes the FBI creates crimes quote, “Informants and agents don’t always play the role of passive listener. They may offer the suspect the opportunity to participate in a fictitious terror plot replete with fake bombs and real guns. Court documents show.” And indeed court documents do show that and it’s wrong.
A law enforcement agency should never encourage anyone to break the law. It is grotesque and yet, they routinely do that.
CNN once admitted that that was happening and that it was a problem, but they won’t admit it anymore.
Earlier this week, we reported on this show that among those who stormed the Capitol on January 6, there appeared to be people who are working for the FBI We didn’t guess that, we concluded it based on the government’s own court filings, thanks to a piece in “Revolver News.”
Dozens of suspects the FBI now says committed serious crimes on January 6 have not been charged with anything. They haven’t even been identified. Why is that? Well, likely because they were in contact with the FBI before they committed those crimes. That is the definition of corruption. You’re working for the FBI, so you’re not charged for a crime.
It is, also by the way, scary given the current climate, given that January 6th is now being used as a pretext to strip law-abiding Americans of their most basic civil liberties. So, given that, we have an absolute right to know exactly what happened that day and the FBI’s role in it.
Again, we believe the FBI had people on the ground, people who stormed the Capitol and committed crimes while inside. We said that. The FBI has not denied it. In fact, no one from the FBI has even commented on it. They don’t have to, because this time, they have CNN squarely on their side.
Watch the apologist for corrupt Federal law enforcement deny something they couldn’t possibly be in a position to verify either way, but prepare yourself as you watch it. This is an appalling performance.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: And now, it is the FBI? Tucker Carlson’s newest baseless theory about the insurrection and how he is spreading it to millions of people.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: A new conspiracy theory is emerging about the attack on the U.S. Capitol. You hear this? Directly from hate TV.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This is the beginning of a new effort to rewrite what happened on January 6, even though it is wrong and as you will hear from one of our analysts, impossibly wrong.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And the whole crux of it is that this was an FBI insider operation. Clearly untrue. Clearly untrue. Totally baseless.
REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): Let me say again, it’s insane to think that the FBI did this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It’s clearly untrue. It’s totally wrong. All right, why don’t you explain how? We have almost two dozen people who have been identified as criminals who are not being charged. Why is that exactly? Why don’t you tell us?
But they didn’t.
And then just to make it totally obvious that CNN now functions as an arm of the woke national security state, which they do, the channel then invited on the former Assistant Director of the FBI, a man called Chris Swecker to reassure viewers that the FBI did absolutely nothing wrong on January 6th. Not one bad thing, trust us.
And of course, CNN does trust the FBI. The FBI’s word is good enough for CNN.
The change here is bewildering. It seems like just the other day that CNN’s own chief anchor was telling us the shocking story of the 2015 terror attack in Garland, Texas. That’s the one in which an FBI agent texted the shooter words of encouragement. The FBI literally worked to make that shooting happen.
It’s not an exaggeration, we know that. An FBI agent was even present at the attack. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDERSON COOPER, “60 MINUTES” (voice over): It turns out the undercover agent did more than just communicate online with Elton Simpson. In an affidavit filed in another case, the government disclosed that the FBI undercover agent had actually traveled to Garland, Texas, and was present at the event.
The undercover agent was in a car directly behind Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi when they started shooting.
This cell phone photo of school security guard, Bruce Joiner and police officer, Greg Stevens was taken by the undercover agent seconds before the attack.
COOPER (on camera): The idea that he is taking a photograph of the two people who happen to be attacked moments before they are attacked —
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It is stunning.
COOPER (voice over): If you’re wondering what happened to the FBI’s undercover agent? He fled the scene, but was stopped at gunpoint by Garland Police. This is video of him in handcuffs recorded by a local news crew.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So, tell us again how the FBI would never have anything to do with the attack on the Capitol on January 6? What you just saw were some of the counterterrorism tactics the FBI adopted after 9/11, all of us saw it happen.
Now, the Bureau has changed its focus. It is no longer going after Islamic extremism, it is now going after Joe Biden’s political opponents. Those the domestic terrorists they’ve been telling you about.
This is a nightmare. It’s nightmare for civil liberties, it’s a threat to democracy itself. We should have seen it coming, we did not see it coming embarrassingly.
Glenn Greenwald saw it coming. He is an independent journalist who writes on “Substack” and he is going to join us in just a moment to explain what he thinks actually happened.
In the meantime, though, the Biden administration is not waiting and has declared war on domestic terror. You may be in that category. We know because the administration has released a document called the national strategy for countering domestic terrorism. It reads like a manual for targeting the administration’s political opponents because that’s exactly what it is, and if there is one story you should pay attention to this year, it’s this one. It could affect you.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
