Tucker Carlson says Israel pushed him to report false allegations against Hunter Biden

Conservative US commentator Tucker Carlson said Israeli "agents" close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed him to falsely report that Hunter Biden’s leaked laptop material showed him abusing minors.

"The claim that there was material involving the abuse of minors on the computer came from the Israelis," Carlson said in an interview aired on Monday with Hunter, former US President Joe Biden's son. "I'm just telling you that they came to me with it, and that's how I know it.”

Carlson’s claim dates back to 2020 when he was a presenter at the right-wing cable news network Fox and pushed allegations that Hunter was involved in corrupt business dealings with Ukraine when his father was vice president.

The younger Biden’s laptop story emerged in the weeks before the 2020 US election, which President Biden went on to win against President Donald Trump.

The story started with John Paul Mac Isaac, a computer repair shop owner in Wilmington, Delaware, who said Hunter left a damaged Apple computer and an external hard drive at his shop in April 2019. The FBI obtained possession of the laptop in December 2019.

In October 2020, The New York Post reported on emails contained in the laptop that detailed the younger Biden’s business dealings with Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company whose board Hunter sat on.

Other personal information obtained from the laptop and hard drive included videos of Hunter smoking crack, having sex and soliciting female prostitutes. Photos and videos of Hunter's drug- and alcohol fuelled rendezvous with prostitutes circled online during the early years of his father's presidency and were reported on regularly by Fox and The New York Post.

Carlson said that the false allegation about abuse of minors was a product of Israel’s misinformation campaign and was falsely attributed by former US intelligence officials to Russian propaganda.

“They (Israel) were behind it," Carlson said. ”I felt like everybody in Washington knew it, but there was so much pressure not to criticise Israel in any way that they just said, 'It's the Russians, it's the Russians'.”

"Maybe the Russians had a hand in it, but it was the Israelis who were pushing that fact," Carlson said. ”Fact, I mean literally [pushing it] to me.”

There is no evidence that Hunter abused minors. The former US president's son has long acknowledged the videos, texts and photos showing him engaging in drug and sex acts.

For his part, Carlson acknowledged not sharing the Israeli angle when he was covering the story for Fox News.

Hunter said that he didn’t have confirmation of who was behind his laptop leak, but said several parties were behind the dissemination of the laptop's material, including Russians, domestic US opponents of his father, and a "Netanyahu operation centre, the Israeli side”.

Hunter joined Carlson in criticising Netanyahu.

"If pointing out that Benjamin Netanyahu is evil incarnate is antisemitic, then I don't know what to tell people anymore," Hunter said.