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Tag: Gabbard

  • Republicans reject complaint about Tulsi Gabbard as Democrats question time it took to see it

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    The Republican leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees have rejected a top-secret complaint from an anonymous government insider alleging that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard withheld classified information for political reasons.The responses this week from Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Rick Crawford mean the complaint is unlikely to proceed further, though Democratic lawmakers who also have seen the document said they continue to question why it took Gabbard’s office eight months to refer the complaint to Congress as required by law.Gabbard’s office has rejected any allegations of wrongdoing as well as criticism of the timeframe for the referral, saying the complaint included so many classified details that it necessitated an extensive legal and security review. Select lawmakers were able to view the complaint this week.Cotton wrote Thursday on X that he agreed with an earlier inspector general’s conclusion that the complaint did not appear to be credible. He said he believes the complaint was prompted by political opposition to Gabbard and the Trump administration.“To be frank, it seems like just another effort by the president’s critics in and out of government to undermine policies that they don’t like,” wrote the Arkansas Republican, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.When asked about the complaint, Cotton’s office referred to his social media post.Crawford, the House Intelligence Committee chairman, also of Arkansas, said he believes the complaint was an attempt to smear Gabbard’s reputation.Democrats are pushing for explanations about why it took Gabbard’s office months to refer the complaint to the required members of Congress. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the law requires such a report to be sent within 21 days.“The law is clear,” Warner said Thursday at the Capitol. “I think it was an effort to try to bury this whistleblower complaint.”Warner said he also still has questions about the details of the complaint, noting that it was heavily redacted.The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said in a written statement that he will keep looking into the matter.In a memo sent to lawmakers this week, the intelligence community’s inspector general said the complaint also accused Gabbard’s office of general counsel of failing to report a potential crime to the Department of Justice. The memo, which contains redactions, does not offer further details of either allegation.Last June, then-inspector general Tamara Johnson found that the claim Gabbard distributed classified information along political lines did not appear to be credible, according to the current watchdog, Christopher Fox. Johnson was “unable to assess the apparent credibility” of the accusation about the general counsel’s office, Fox wrote in the memo.Fox said he would have deemed the complaint non-urgent, unlike the previous inspector general, but respected the decision of his predecessor and therefore sent it to lawmakers.Copies of the top-secret complaint were hand-delivered this week to the “Gang of Eight” — a group comprised of the House and Senate leaders from both parties as well as the four top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees.Andrew Bakaj, the attorney for the person who made the complaint, has said that while he cannot discuss the details of the report or the identity of its author, there is no justification for keeping it from Congress since last spring.A former CIA officer and now the chief legal counsel at Whistleblower Aid, Bakaj said he has heard significant redactions were made to the complaint before it was given to members of Congress.“Given the extensive redactions we understand exist, even in the version provided to the Gang of Eight, it seems unlikely anyone could reasonably and in a non-partisan manner reach the conclusions issued by Sen. Cotton,” Bakaj wrote in a statement to The Associated Press.Gabbard coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies. She has recently drawn attention for another matter — appearing on site last week when the FBI served a search warrant on election offices in Georgia that are central to Trump’s disproven claims about fraud in the 2020 election.

    WASHINGTON —

    The Republican leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees have rejected a top-secret complaint from an anonymous government insider alleging that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard withheld classified information for political reasons.

    The responses this week from Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Rick Crawford mean the complaint is unlikely to proceed further, though Democratic lawmakers who also have seen the document said they continue to question why it took Gabbard’s office eight months to refer the complaint to Congress as required by law.

    Gabbard’s office has rejected any allegations of wrongdoing as well as criticism of the timeframe for the referral, saying the complaint included so many classified details that it necessitated an extensive legal and security review. Select lawmakers were able to view the complaint this week.

    Cotton wrote Thursday on X that he agreed with an earlier inspector general’s conclusion that the complaint did not appear to be credible. He said he believes the complaint was prompted by political opposition to Gabbard and the Trump administration.

    “To be frank, it seems like just another effort by the president’s critics in and out of government to undermine policies that they don’t like,” wrote the Arkansas Republican, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.

    When asked about the complaint, Cotton’s office referred to his social media post.

    Crawford, the House Intelligence Committee chairman, also of Arkansas, said he believes the complaint was an attempt to smear Gabbard’s reputation.

    Democrats are pushing for explanations about why it took Gabbard’s office months to refer the complaint to the required members of Congress. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the law requires such a report to be sent within 21 days.

    “The law is clear,” Warner said Thursday at the Capitol. “I think it was an effort to try to bury this whistleblower complaint.”

    Warner said he also still has questions about the details of the complaint, noting that it was heavily redacted.

    The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said in a written statement that he will keep looking into the matter.

    In a memo sent to lawmakers this week, the intelligence community’s inspector general said the complaint also accused Gabbard’s office of general counsel of failing to report a potential crime to the Department of Justice. The memo, which contains redactions, does not offer further details of either allegation.

    Last June, then-inspector general Tamara Johnson found that the claim Gabbard distributed classified information along political lines did not appear to be credible, according to the current watchdog, Christopher Fox. Johnson was “unable to assess the apparent credibility” of the accusation about the general counsel’s office, Fox wrote in the memo.

    Fox said he would have deemed the complaint non-urgent, unlike the previous inspector general, but respected the decision of his predecessor and therefore sent it to lawmakers.

    Copies of the top-secret complaint were hand-delivered this week to the “Gang of Eight” — a group comprised of the House and Senate leaders from both parties as well as the four top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

    Andrew Bakaj, the attorney for the person who made the complaint, has said that while he cannot discuss the details of the report or the identity of its author, there is no justification for keeping it from Congress since last spring.

    A former CIA officer and now the chief legal counsel at Whistleblower Aid, Bakaj said he has heard significant redactions were made to the complaint before it was given to members of Congress.

    “Given the extensive redactions we understand exist, even in the version provided to the Gang of Eight, it seems unlikely anyone could reasonably and in a non-partisan manner reach the conclusions issued by Sen. Cotton,” Bakaj wrote in a statement to The Associated Press.

    Gabbard coordinates the work of the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies. She has recently drawn attention for another matter — appearing on site last week when the FBI served a search warrant on election offices in Georgia that are central to Trump’s disproven claims about fraud in the 2020 election.

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  • U.S. national intelligence director is silent on Venezuela operation

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    WASHINGTON — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had yet to weigh in on the U.S. operation to remove Nicolás Maduro from power in Caracas as of Saturday night, more than 24 hours since President Trump approved the audacious mission that captured the Venezuelan leader.

    Her silence on the operation surprised some in the U.S. intelligence community, which laid the groundwork for the mission over several months, and which had assets in harm’s way on the ground in Venezuela as the operation unfolded.

    CIA Director John Ratcliffe, by contrast, accompanied Trump in Mar-a-Lago throughout the night as the extraction was underway, and stood beside the president as he conducted a news conference announcing the results.

    “Teamwork at its finest,” Ratcliffe wrote on social media, posted alongside photos of him with the president’s team in the temporary situation room set up at Trump’s Florida estate.

    Gabbard, a native of Hawaii who, according to her X account, spent the holidays in her home state, made a name for herself as a member of Congress campaigning against “regime change wars,” particularly the U.S. war in Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein.

    In a speech at Turning Point USA’s annual conference last month, Gabbard criticized “warmongers” in the “deep state” of the intelligence community she leads trying to thwart Trump’s efforts to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine.

    “Too often we, the American people, are told we must choose between liberty or security, and which side often wins out in that proposition,” she told the gathered crowd. “Liberty loses, and the warmongers claim that they are doing what they are doing for the sake of our security. It’s a lie.”

    Outside of government, during Trump’s first term, Gabbard also criticized advocates for regime change in Venezuela, writing in 2019, “It’s about the oil … again.”

    “The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,” Gabbard wrote at the time. “Let the Venezuelan people determine their future.

    “We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders,” she added, “so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”

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    Michael Wilner

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  • Gabbard Slashing Intelligence Office Workforce, Cutting Budget By More Than $700 Million – KXL

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    Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

    WASHINGTON (AP) — The Office of the Director of National Intelligence will dramatically reduce its workforce and cut its budget by more than $700 million annually, the Trump administration announced Wednesday.

    Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a statement, “Over the last 20 years, ODNI has become bloated and inefficient, and the intelligence community is rife with abuse of power, unauthorized leaks of classified intelligence, and politicized weaponization of intelligence.”

    She said the intelligence community “must make serious changes to fulfill its responsibility to the American people and the U.S. Constitution by focusing on our core mission: find the truth and provide objective, unbiased, timely intelligence to the President and policymakers.”

    The reorganization is part of a broader administration effort to rethink its evaluation of foreign threats to American elections, a topic that has become politically loaded given President Donald Trump’s long-running resistance to the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered on his behalf in the 2016 election.

    In February, for instance, Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded an FBI task force focused on investigating foreign influence operations, including those that target U.S. elections. The Trump administration also has made sweeping cuts at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which oversees the nation’s critical infrastructure, including election systems.

    Gabbard’s efforts to downsize the agency she leads is in keeping with the cost-cutting mandate the administration has employed since its earliest days, when Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency oversaw mass layoffs of the federal workforce.

    It’s the latest headline-making move by a key official who just a few months ago had seemed out of favor with Trump over her analysis of Iran’s nuclear capabilities but who in recent weeks has emerged as a key loyalist.

    She’s released a series of documents meant to call into question the legitimacy of the intelligence community’s findings on Russian election interference in 2016, and this week, at Trump’s direction, revoked the security clearances of 37 current and former government officials.

    The ODNI in the past has joined forces with other federal agencies to debunk and alert the public to foreign disinformation intended to influence U.S. voters.

    For example, it was involved in an effort to raise awareness about a Russian video that falsely depicted mail-in ballots being destroyed in Pennsylvania that circulated widely on social media in the weeks before the 2024 presidential election.

    Notably, Gabbard said she would be refocusing the priorities of the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which her office says on its website is “focused on mitigating threats to democracy and U.S. national interests from foreign malign influence.”

    It wasn’t clear from Gabbard’s release or fact sheet exactly what the changes would entail, but Gabbard noted its “hyper-focus” on work tied to elections and said the center was “used by the previous administration to justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition.”

    The Biden administration created the Foreign Malign Influence Center in 2022, responding to what the U.S. intelligence community had assessed as attempts by Russia and other adversaries to interfere with American elections.

    Its role, ODNI said when it announced the center’s creation, was to coordinate and integrate intelligence pertaining to malign influence.

    In a briefing given to reporters in 2024, ODNI officials said they only notified candidates, political organizations and local election offices of disinformation operations when they could be attributed to foreign sources. They said they worked to avoid any appearance of policing Americans’ speech.

    Sen. Tom Cotton, the Republican chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, hailed the decision to broadly revamp ODNI, saying it would make it a “stronger and more effective national security tool for President Trump.”

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    Jordan Vawter

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