MSNBC host Rev. Al Sharpton doesn’t deny a Smoking Gun report claiming he was an FBI informant, but he calls the story old news.
“I don’t see this as news,” Sharpton told FoxNews.com. “This has been brought up three or four times now. I don’t understand. It’s crazy.”
The story describes how Sharpton secretly recorded Mafia bosses and other underworld figures for an FBI-NYPD crime task force in the mid-1980s.
In a written response through his National Action Network Sharpton acknowledged having contact with the FBI, saying he told agents he was threatened by mobsters and that authorities should investigate the mob trying to squeeze black concert promoters. Sharpton says he was just “trying to get bad guys out of the music industry.”
“I have no knowledge of doing anything more than trying to stop the mob from threatening and limiting our fight for Black concert promoters,” Sharpton says.
An FBI spokesman tells FoxNews.com: “As a rule, the [agency] does not confirm the identity of sources.”