Tucker Carlson, the new golden boy of Fox News, could easily have lost his TV career years ago after he was falsely accused of rape, he has revealed.

The dapper host's blossoming career - which has gone into overdrive since the huge ratings of his new primetime Fox News show - could have been cut short if the accusation contained in a lawyer's letter had been made public in the early 2000s.

And now the woman who accused him has exclusively told DailyMail.com that it was all a misunderstanding - brought on by a mental health condition from which she was suffering.

'I was delusional,' admitted Kimberly Carter, whom Carlson, 47, named in his 2003 book, Politicians, Partisans and Parasites.

She also blamed her lawyer, saying he should never have written to the TV host threatening to prosecute him for sexual assault.

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Tucker Carlson, the new golden boy of Fox News, could easily have lost his TV career years ago after he was falsely accused of rape, he has revealed

Kimberly Carter, the woman who accused Carlson, (pictured on her now-defunct accountancy website) told DailyMail.com that it was a misunderstanding

Carter, who lives in Indiana, told DailyMail.com that she suffers from schizoaffective disorder, a condition with symptoms similar to schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder.

She said a friend had told her that Carlson would be at Harper's Restaurant, a burger and pizza joint in Louisville, Kentucky, and she went along to try to meet him. 'I had a bit of a crush on him at the time,' she said.

Carter, now 56, said she fell while in the restaurant, hitting her head. 'The next thing I knew people were waking me up with smelling salts.'

She said she spoke to her attorney Paul 'Matt' Blanton and told him something may have happened in the restaurant and she may have been molested, but she wasn't certain.

'I said "don't do anything about it until I find out for sure", but he went ahead and wrote the letter,' added Carter.

'I think he was trying to make a name for himself, but he didn't have my permission to write that letter,' she insisted.

Carlson's onetime accuser said she later realized she had not been molested and she wrote to him to apologize.

The TV star's new show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, debuted last Monday, drawing in 3.7 million viewers - Fox's biggest audience of the year during that time slot, according to Nielsen Media Research. The viewing figures were more than the audience for CNN and MSNBC combined.

But in his book, Politicians, Partisans and Parasites, Carlson - who has been married to high school sweetheart Susan Andrews since 1991 - revealed that the false charge could easily have ended his career in television shortly after it began.

Carlson has been married to high school sweetheart Susan Andrews since 1991 (pictured together in 2013)

He was accused while working for his first TV employer, CNN, where he was employed from 2000 to 2005. And he realized the Atlanta-based network would have had no compunction in canning him if the allegation leaked out.

'I knew the network would fire me immediately if it found out about the letter, and certainly if charges were filed against me,' he wrote.

'The one thing every journalist knows for certain about sex scandals is that they're always true. Partly true anyway.

'Maybe you didn't rape this woman, they'd think; maybe you just had unusually rough sadomasochistic sex with her and she misconstrued it. Or maybe your affair with her simply fell apart in an acrimonious way, perhaps over your cocaine habit.

'Maybe you had sex with her but never knew her name. Something definitely happened between you, though. People don't just make up specific allegations out of nothing.'

The TV star's new show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, debuted last Monday, drawing in 3.7 million viewers - Fox's biggest audience of the year during that time slot, according to Nielsen Media Research

The viewing figures for the show's debut were more than the audience for CNN and MSNBC combined

But Carlson, who has become cable news's latest 'overnight sensation' after more than a decade and a half of bouncing around from CNN to MSNBC to Fox, insists that's exactly what happened with him.

In the book, written in 2003 when he was still with CNN, Carlson went into great detail about how the supposed incident in Louisville occurred.

'We met at Harper's Restaurant on Hurstborne Parkway, where I slipped narcotics into her drink,' wrote Carlson, describing Carter's account of the attack.

'She knew immediately that she had been violently raped. By me. In the restaurant. Presumably within view of dozens of other people, not one of whom had thought to report the crime to the police or the press.

'It was a preposterous story. I'd never heard of Harper's Restaurant. I'd never been to Louisville. Judging from my schedule in March, I couldn't have gotten there. I was on television almost every night in Washington.'

But Carlson said that even though his hotshot Washington D.C. lawyer Bob Bennett explained to Carter's attorney that the accusation was simply not believable, he was given just a week to prove it was untrue or Blanton would take the case to the prosecutor.

'By the way,' Blanton allegedly added, 'we have evidence that Carlson and my client know each other. There's correspondence.'

Blanton was referring to fan letters that his client had written to Carlson, the TV talking head said.

Carlson named Carter and described the incident in his 2003 book, Politicians, Partisans and Parasites

'Twice she had sent me small gifts, keychains, and ballpoint pens. I wrote her thank-you notes both times, hence her lawyer's claim about "correspondence". I hadn't remembered any of this.

'Later, one of my producers dug up an e-mail Carter sent me. "I watch your show all of the time," it said. "You are great."'

Carlson claimed she had written it on his birthday, a month after he had supposedly raped her.

'It's hard to hate someone who is delusional, and as angry as I was, I was inclined to give Carter a pass on grounds of craziness,' Carlson wrote, but her attorney was another matter.

'(T)he weaselly, pompous little Matt Blanton - I wanted to kill him. At the very least I wanted him to pay my legal bills, which by this point had reached over $14,000, not a dime of it covered by insurance or the network. And I wanted a prolonged, groveling, preferably tearful apology for sending a letter to my place of work accusing me of a felony sex crime.'

But he didn't get either because his own lawyers pointed out that trying to sue the lawyer would only draw attention to the fact that he had been accused of rape in the first place.

'In the end, my name would be joined in the same sentence with the word rape, and it was worth at least fourteen grand to keep that from happening.'

A week after the case was dropped, Carter sent Carlson a letter.

'In light of the evidence that you provided to me, obviously the person who had assaulted me was not in actuality Tucker Carlson, but an imposter,' she wrote. That infuriated Carlson even more.

'She said sorry, sort of, and that was the extent of her contrition,' he wrote in his book.

'Because, as she went on to explain, she's the real victim here. "I don't appreciate the statements that you made about my mental status," Carter wrote, launching into a lecture about the need to show sensitivity and tolerance toward people with emotional disabilities.

'I am a highly educated individual, with multiple degrees,' she said.

Yes, she conceded, 'I am a manic-depressive.' But 'everyone of concern knows that this condition can be very well managed. It is usually the ignorant that sensationalize it. There are some very successful people who have this condition. I know many.'

'In other words," the TV host wrote, "Carter's craziness may have cost me thousands of dollars and jeopardized my career, my reputation, and my freedom. But it was still wrong of me - "ignorant" - to suggest that her mental illness might not be such a good thing.

'Nuts or not, Kimberly Carter had a lot of chutzpah,' he wrote.

Six months later, Carter contacted him again, sending a clock radio with his name on and apologizing 'for the misunderstanding.' Another letter followed in which she called herself 'Your Biggest Fan!'

'Her next card had five exclamation points, which I took as a sign of escalating mania. I looked her up on the Internet to try to assess the threat.

'She was there. In fact, she had her own website, www.accounting-computing.com, complete with a photograph of herself sitting at the computer. I'd never seen her before. She was a heavyset woman in her early forties with waist-length hair and short bangs. She didn't look crazy.

'The site gave me the creeps, and I was tempted to call her and tell her to stop bothering me,' he wrote.

'I never did, though. No matter how tempting it may be, no good can come from corresponding with the mentally ill.'

Carlson overcame the allegation and now his career is blossoming. His new show’s debut last week won the second highest ratings all year for the 7 pm slot with 3.7 million viewers and continued with high ratings throughout its first week.