Conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson claims the CIA is seeking to refer him to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution over texts he sent before the start of the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran.

Carlson, a former Fox News TV show host, posted a video on X on Saturday explaining the reason for the referral.

“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. “What’s that crime? Well, talking to people in Iran before the war. 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 is likely referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people who are paid by foreign governments for lobbying or political advocacy to register with the DOJ.

"And I don't expect this to go anywhere. I'm not too worried about an actual criminal case against me for a bunch of reasons," he said, one of which is, “I’m not an agent of a foreign power.

“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. Its interests are the only interests I care about because I'm from here, and I have a lot of kids,” Carlson continued.

"I've also never taken money from anybody — don’t need it, don’t want it — and that's provable. And moreover, it's my job to talk to everybody all the time and try and figure out what's happening around the world — that's literally what I do for a living — and I'm not gonna stop doing that, nor should I, I don't think. I'm also an American — I can talk to anybody. I have no secrets to divulge.

“Legally, I think, the case is ludicrous, and I doubt it’ll even become a case,” Carlson added.

He explained that he is discussing the CIA's alleged actions because "countries tend to become more authoritarian in wartime — it's just the nature of war, people are dying, the stakes are high."

"There's much less tolerance for any kind of dissent in the homeland," Carlson said. "The irony, of course, is the United States fights wars on behalf of freedom, but there's always less of it here in our country during war. So that's a widely-recognized phenomenon, and it's likely to happen now, too.”

He added that the U.S. intelligence agencies "spy on Americans," which he noted was well-known, but said "it's probably a little more widespread than most people understand. And it's outrageous. There's no justification for your government — which you own, you're a shareholder in it, you pay for it — to be violating your privacy like this. But it happens all the time."

Carlson said that in the CIA, “there are some people who are mad at me for my views about Israel, and they have some latitude. And one of the reasons they pass on criminal complaints, in effect, to law enforcement is to justify warrants for spying on Americans. So that is an absolutely real thing.

"But the main reason they do it is to leak the existence of the investigation, such as it is, to the media, and then humiliate and terrify the subjects of this op. And that, of course, has happened to me repeatedly, many times."

Carlson has been critical of the U.S. war with Iran. He called the strikes that began last month “absolutely disgusting and evil,” and said Operation Epic Fury was being “waged” on behalf of Israel, Mediaite reported.

President Trump said that Carlson is not a part of the Make America Great Again movement.

“Tucker has lost his way,” Trump said earlier this month. “I knew that a long time ago, and he’s not MAGA. 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.”