Here we go again. Near the end of his show on Fox News Tuesday night, Sean Hannity casually said that he’s been told that he and all three of his panel members at the time are currently under some kind of illegal surveillance.
“By the way, I have sources saying all of us are being surveilled illegally, just in case you’re interested,” Hannity said. His guests were Circa’s Sara Carter, The Hill’s John Solomon and Trump legal counsel Jay Sekulow.
He provided no further details about his claims but his claim but it came at the end of the segment in which the group had been discussing Fusion GPS and the anti-Trump “Steele dossier” (Vox has a pretty good rundown of that whole thing here).
They were specifically discussing the suspicion, long held by some conservatives, that the information in the dossier was used to obtain wide-ranging surveillance warrants issued by a FISA court. Fusion GPS CEO Glenn Simpson appeared before the House Intelligence Committee in a closed-door session earlier on Tuesday.
Anyway, it was at the end of that whole conversation when Hannity casually dropped his little bombshell.
It’s not the first time that Hannity has suggested he was the target of secret government surveillance. Back in April, alt-right figure Chuck Johnson claimed that Hannity was under surveillance in 2016 for having ties to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
At the time, Hannity tweeted this comment: “Thank u all for heads up. I have zero knowledge of any surveillance vs me or unmasking of me by The Obama administration. Nothing shocks me!” He also discussed the matter on his radio show.
In August on his radio show, Hannity brought up once again the possibility that he had been surveilled, saying that he would “sanction the biggest lawsuit that I possibly can with the biggest attorneys in the country so we can do something to stop the shredding of the Constitution” should it turn out to have actually happened. He also tweeted about it then.
https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/894731581469859842
The difference, of course, is that on Tuesday he said “being surveilled” rather than any past surveillance, which would imply that this is something new and separate from what he had talked about before — and occurring under the Trump administration.
But since he didn’t elaborate, we’ll have to leave it at that.