DNI Tulsi Gabbard denies wrongdoing over classified whistleblower complaint
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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Saturday denied any wrongdoing as Democrats questioned why it took almost a year for a whistleblower complaint against her filed last May to be sent to Congress.
“[Virginia Democrat] “Senator Mark Warner and his friends at Propaganda Media have repeatedly lied to the American people that I or the ODNI ‘hid’ a whistleblower complaint in a vault for eight months,” Gabbard wrote in a long X post on Saturday. “This is a blatant lie.”
He continued, “I do not currently and have never had the Whistleblower’s possession or control of the complaint, so I could not ‘store’ it in a safe deposit box. Biden-era IC Inspector General Tamara Johnson was responsible for securing the complaint for months.”
The highly secret complaint by a U.S. intelligence official alleging Gabbard’s misconduct was filed with the intelligence agency’s watchdog office eight months ago and was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Saturday denied any wrongdoing as Democrats questioned why it took almost a year for a whistleblower complaint against her filed last May to be sent to Congress. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
According to the Journal, the complaint has been locked in a vault since it was filed; A US official told the newspaper that disclosing its contents “could seriously harm national security”.
The whistleblower’s attorney accused Gabbard’s office of moving slowly on the complaint, which her office dismissed as “baseless and politically motivated.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are also questioning why it took so long for his office to forward the complaint to Congress.
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“The law is clear,” Warner, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday, according to NPR, adding that the complaint must be sent to Congress within 21 days of the filing date. “I think this is an effort to cover up the whistleblower complaint.”
The content of the complaint and the allegations against Gabbard have not yet been disclosed.
Gabbard wrote in a post on Saturday that she first saw the complaint “when I needed to review it to provide guidance on how it should be safely shared with Congress.”
Speaking at a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., questioned why it took eight months for a whistleblower complaint against Tulsi Gabbard to reach Congress. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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“As the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Warner knows full well that whistleblower complaints involving highly classified and compartmentalized intelligence should be kept in a vault — even if they contain baseless allegations like these — which is what Biden-era Inspector General Tamara Johnson did and her successor, Inspector General Chris Fox, has continued to do.” “After IC Inspector General Fox hand-delivered the complaint to the Gang of 8, the complaint was returned to a vault where it remained, consistent with any information of such sensitivity.”
He claimed that “Warner either knows these facts and is deliberately lying to the American people, or has no idea how these things work and is therefore not qualified to sit in the U.S. Senate.”
Gabbard also wrote: “When a complaint is deemed not credible, there is no timeline for providing security guidance under the law. The ’21 day’ requirement that Senator Warner claims I did not comply with applies only when a complaint is determined by the Inspector General to be both urgent and apparently credible. That is NOT the case here.”
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard shakes hands with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
A representative of the inspector general said he found some of the allegations in the complaint against Gabbard to be uncredible, but had not yet reached a decision on others, according to the Journal.
Gabbard said she was notified on Dec. 4 that she would need to provide security guidance regarding IC Inspector General Chris Fox’s complaint, and “she detailed this in her letter to Congress.”
He later said he “took immediate action to provide security guidance to the Intelligence Community Inspector General, who shared the complaint last week and referenced the intelligence with relevant members of Congress.”
In closing her post, Gabbard once again accused Warner of “spreading lies and baseless accusations for months for political gain,” which she said “harmed our national security and harmed the American people and the Intelligence Community.”
Warner’s office told Fox News Digital Gabbard’s post was “a completely false attack on the brand for someone who has already and repeatedly proven that she is not qualified to serve as DNI.”
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Republicans on the House and Senate intelligence committees supported Gabbard; Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote Thursday in
He added: “Frankly, this appears to be yet another effort by the president’s critics, inside and outside the government, to undermine policies they dislike; these are certainly not credible allegations of waste, fraud or abuse.”
Gabbard’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
