Tucker Carlson Claims Lawyers Warned Biden Administration Would Arrest Him If He Gave Putin Softball Interview

Screenshot via Lex Fridman Podcast YouTube

Tucker Carlson is claiming some pricey attorneys advised him that he could be arrested if he chose to jet off to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In a three hour podcast with Lex Fridman, Carlson jumped to a number of topics, one of which was his controversial interview with Putin earlier this month. While Carlson pushed Putin on several subjects like the unjust imprisonment of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, his interview faced a lot of backlash and was described as softball by critics, including Putin himself.

Carlson also earned mockery for praising Russia’s grocery stores and public transit. He called a trip to the grocery store “radicalizing.”

Shortly after the Putin interview, jailed activist Alexei Navalny died in a Russian prison. The state called it natural causes, but President Joe Biden and others have said Putin is responsible for the death of his vocal critic, who had returned to Russia in 2021 after a poisoning attempt on his life.

“My lawyers before I left, and these are people who work for a big law firm, this is not Bob’s Law Firm, this is one of the biggest law firms in the world, said you’re going to get arrested if you do this, by the U.S. government on sanctions violations,” Carlson told Fridman.

The former Fox News host, who recently launched his own media company, noted that these lawyers cost “thousands of dollars” to get various experts and researchers to weigh in with conclusions.

“Their sincere conclusion was do not do this,” Carlson said about the advice he received in a memo.

He also claimed one lawyer told him that if the interview was too “softball,” he could somehow wind up behind bars.

“He said, ‘look, a lot will depend on the questions that you ask Putin. If you’re seen as too nice to him, you could get arrested when you come back,'” he said.

Carlson declared he was more than ready for such a battle.

“I said, well I don’t recognize the legitimacy of that actually because I’m American and I’ve here my whole life and that’s so outrageous that I’m happy to face that risk because I so reject the premise,” he said.

Putin expressed disappointment with the Carlson interview, saying he thought the conservative pundit would “be more aggressive.”

“I honestly thought he would be aggressive and ask so-called sharp questions. And I wasn’t just ready for that, I wanted it, because it would have given me the opportunity to respond sharply in kind,” Putin told Russian media. “But he chose a different tactic.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country is fighting off a Russian invasion, referred to Carlson’s interview as “two hours of bullshit.”

Listen to the entire discussion between Lex Fridman and Tucker Carlson here.