Warner calls Gabbard to testify over GA election raid, Trump FBI call

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., on Tuesday called on Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to testify in person before the Senate Intelligence Committee about her involvement in an FBI raid on an election office in Georgia last week.

Warner, the intelligence panel’s deputy chairman, said he was particularly concerned that Gabbard brokered a phone call between FBI agents and President Donald Trump after the search warrant was executed.

“Let’s be clear: It is inappropriate for a sitting president to be personally involved in a criminal investigation connected to an election he lost,” Warner told reporters on Capitol Hill. he said.

The senator also sounded the alarm about Trump’s latest suggestion that Republicans “take over” and “nationalize” the elections.

“This statement alone makes clear that this threat to our election security, the bedrock of our democracy, is prospective from 2026 to 2028,” he said.

Warner’s comments turn up the volume Trump, who has vehemently refused to accept Democrats’ 2020 election loss and continues to falsely claim he won the race try to interfere in the upcoming midterms.

Even as the minority party, Senate Democrats have the power to compel people to testify.

Warner accused Gabbard’s office of systematically “dismantling” various guardrails designed to protect the election.

“When you put all of this together, it’s clear that what’s happening in Fulton County is not about revisiting the past, it’s about shaping the outcomes of future elections,” he said.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Warner’s remarks.

In a letter to Warner and other lawmakers on Monday, Gabbard said her presence at the Fulton County elections office was “requested” by Trump and that she only observed the execution of an FBI search warrant there “for a short period of time.”

County spokesmen say federal agents search for records It’s about the 2020 elections. Fulton County Superior Court Clerk Che Alexander he told local outlet WSB-TV Last week, “they received 24 pallets containing 656 boxes of 2020 election documents.”

Gabbard said in the letter that as DNI, she “has broad statutory authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security, including counterintelligence (CI), foreign and other malicious influences, and cybersecurity.”

Gabbard seemed to generally approve of this, too New York Times‘ He reported that he called Trump during his meeting with FBI agents after the raid and put him on speakerphone to praise them for their work.

“While visiting the FBI Field Office in Atlanta, I thanked the FBI agents for their professionalism and excellent work and provided a brief phone call for the President to personally thank the agents for their work,” Gabbard wrote in her letter. he wrote.

The Times, citing three people with knowledge of the meeting, reported that Trump asked the agents questions, mostly directed by the team supervisor who developed evidence of the search of the election office.

Gabbard’s letter stated that Trump “did not ask any questions nor did he or I provide any instructions” regarding the call.

He added that his office’s general counsel “found my actions to be consistent and consistent with my legal authority.”

Warner rejected this defense.

“Broad authority to analyze intelligence is not permission to participate in a bogus investigation,” he said. “And that certainly does not justify facilitating direct contact with the president of the United States among front-line FBI agents conducting the investigation.”

Trump, meanwhile, urged members of the Republican Party to “take over the vote” in a podcast interview with former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino released Monday.

He made this suggestion after repeating the conspiracy theory that non-citizens were being “brought” to the United States to vote illegally. Trump tied the claim – which is has been refuted many times — with his administration’s aggressive efforts to pursue mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

“If we don’t get them out, Republicans will never win an election again,” Trump told Bongino.

“It’s surprising that Republicans aren’t tougher on this issue. Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over voting, voting in at least 15 places,'” Trump said.

“Republicans should nationalize voting,” he continued. “We have states that are very skewed and they’re counting the votes. We have states that say I won a contest that I didn’t win.”

States are primarily responsible for administering their own election systems.

“You’re going to see something in Georgia that they can get with a court decision and a vote,” Trump added in the interview. “You’ll see some interesting things emerge.”