Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has obsessively covered Hunter Biden’s emails since the story exploded in conservative media earlier this month, suddenly said on Thursday night that he didn’t want to be involved with “piling on” Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son.

In recent weeks, following the New York Post reporting on unverified material purportedly obtained from a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, Carlson has been at the forefront of Fox News’ coverage of the story while accusing the Bidens of corruption.

This includes an exclusive interview with Tony Bobulinski, a former associate of Hunter’s who claims Joe Biden is lying about having no involvement in his son’s Chinese business deals. Numerous outlets, including Fox News’ news division, have reported that a review of corporate records and documents provided by Bobulinski reveals “no role for Joe Biden.”

Carlson, meanwhile, dropped a curious story on Wednesday night apparently introducing a whole new twist in the saga. Hinting at a nefarious plot by Deep State actors, the Fox News star told viewers that “damning” Hunter Biden documents that were shipped to him had “vanished,” adding that it was deeply concerning that such a thing could happen to a “trove of materials that are directly relevant to the presidential campaign that’s six days away.” Later that evening, he told a reporter that “someone’s reading our texts,” implying that he was being spied upon.

By Thursday morning, despite the missing documents being found by shipping company UPS, Carlson continued to hint at malfeasance on the part of unnamed operatives who didn’t want the Biden documents to come out.

After admitting that he had made copies of the documents before they were shipped out, Carlson continued in his conspiratorial vein on Thursday night, questioning UPS’ explanation that the contents of the package—a flash drive containing documents—had been found on Monday night after suffering a rather mundane mishap in which they came out of the package

“How did our flash drive get separated from the package that we sent it in?” Carlson wondered aloud. “That seems like something worth knowing. The envelope was securely sealed, and we know that. UPS does not dispute that. Was a package torn open accidentally by a machine? That seems unlikely and UPS says that almost never happens.”

“So we are left with the obvious explanation: someone for some reason opened our package and removed a flash drive containing documents that were damaging to the Biden family,” he added. “We would love to know who would do that and why.”

But then Carlson suddenly took a step back, noting that they were still “assessing” the documents in question, which he maintained had been verified “to be real” and did not come from Bobulinski. He went on to claim that he has received an “awful lot of documents” about Hunter Biden recently but has “not aired” many of them, insisting he has tried to stick to material involving his business dealings that could relate to his father.

“There are a lot of documents about Hunter Biden’s personal life that we haven’t brought to you and we are not going to and we will tell you why,” he said, noting the obvious reason that Hunter is not running for president.

“But Hunter Biden is a fallen man at this point,” Carlson stated, adding that he once knew the younger Biden well.

“I never thought Hunter Biden was a bad person,” he concluded. “I thought he had demons but in the time I knew him he kept them mostly under control. At some point, he lost control of those demons and the world knows that now. He's now humiliated and alone. Probably too strong to say we feel sorry for Hunter Biden, but the point is pounding on a man, jumping on, and piling on when he's already down is something we don't want to be involved in.”

Interestingly enough, just a couple of hours before Carlson’s broadcast, NBC News reported that a 64-page dossier alleging a complex conspiracy involving Hunter Biden and China was actually authored by a fake persona. The fake intelligence document, which had been floating around the far-right web for a month before the New York Post published a controversial article echoing those conspiracy theories, was eventually disseminated by close associates of the president.