The Conversation (0)
Politics
Liam O'Dell
Feb 15, 2022
Tucker Carlson says Clinton aides allegedly intercepted Trump’s internet traffic
Fox News
Controversial Fox News host Tucker Carlson has been ridiculed online for claiming internet traffic including emails and ‘presumably text messages’ were passed to the FBI from a lawyer involved in Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
We hope we don’t need to explain how the internet works to prove why Carlson’s latest intervention is ridiculous.
His remarks come after US attorney John Durham filed a court document in which he alleged the lawyer, Michael Sussmann, provided documents claiming to show “a covert communications channel between the Trump Organization and a Russia-based bank”.
“The Indictment alleges that [Sussmann] lied in that meeting, falsely stating to the [FBI] General Counsel that he was not providing the allegations to the FBI on behalf of any client.
“In fact, [Sussmann] had assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two specific clients, including a technology executive at a US-based Internet company and the Clinton campaign,” it reads.
CNN reports Sussmann pleaded not guilty to charges of lying to the FBI last year.
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Describing the document, Carlson said on his Fox News show on Monday: “The filing says that [Clinton activist Rodney] Joffe and his computer scientists intercepted internet traffic – that is, emails and presumably text messages – from ‘Trump Tower, Donald Trump’s Central Park West apartment building, and the executive office of the President of the United States’.”
Given text messages aren’t dependent on an internet connection (we’re excluding iMessages from this statement, iPhone users), people were quick to mock the presenter on social media and point out that the document actually alleges that domain name lookups were gathered, rather than emails or text messages:
I guess they don't know how encryption works.— Gods & Country \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@Gods & Country \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8) 1644889582
I just heard a collective sigh from every IT guy that heard this.— L. Ron Howard (@L. Ron Howard) 1644896077
Tell me you don\u2019t have a clue about DNS lookups without telling me you don\u2019t have a clue about DNS lookups \n\nAnyone with the most basic understanding of network architecture could pull off DNS lookup of network traffic.— General Patten (@General Patten) 1644892259
Have an intern explain to him how the internet works.https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1493392516791504897\u00a0\u2026— Trump Of The Day \ud83c\udf0a\ud83c\udf44 (@Trump Of The Day \ud83c\udf0a\ud83c\udf44) 1644915932
Every single reputable news outlet would be called out for such clear and obvious false \u201creporting.\u201d The motion said that a tech company executive gathered lookups, which are not substantive communications such as emails and texts. This is blatantly false.https://twitter.com/acyn/status/1493392516791504897\u00a0\u2026— Daniel Goldman (@Daniel Goldman) 1644888985
Tucker Carlson is an idiot in many things, and now we know that includes standards-based internet technology— cougar and merlin and maverick and goose (@cougar and merlin and maverick and goose) 1644901212
We would encourage Carlson to Google these things before sharing inaccurate information about court documents, but given his knowledge about text messages appears to be lacking, we feel that might be asking too much of him at this stage.
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