DNI Tulsi Gabbard denies wrongdoing over classified whistleblower complaint
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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard denied any wrongdoing Saturday as Democrats question why a whistleblower complaint filed against her last May took nearly a year to reach Congress.
“[Virginia Democrat] Senator Mark Warner and his friends in the propaganda media have repeatedly lied to the American people by saying that I or ODNI ‘hid’ a whistleblower complaint in a safe for eight months,” Gabbard wrote in a lengthy post Saturday. “This is a blatant lie.”
She continued: “I am not now, and have never been, in possession or control of the whistleblower complaint, so I obviously could not have ‘hid’ it in a safe. Biden-era IC Inspector General Tamara Johnson was in possession and responsible for securing the complaint for months.”
The highly classified complaint from a U.S. intelligence official alleging wrongdoing by Gabbard was filed eight months ago with the Office of the Intelligence Community Oversight and was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.
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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard denied any wrongdoing Saturday as Democrats question why a whistleblower complaint filed against her last May took nearly a year to reach Congress. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The complaint has been locked in a safe since it was filed, according to the Journal, with a U.S. official telling the newspaper that disclosure of its contents could cause “serious harm to national security.”
The whistleblower’s lawyer accused Gabbard’s office of a delay in filing a complaint, which his office rejected as “baseless and politically motivated.”
Meanwhile, Democrats are also wondering why it took his office so long to forward the complaint to Congress.
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“The law is clear,” Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday, according to NPR, adding that the complaint must be sent to Congress within 21 days of its filing. “I think it was an attempt to try to bury this whistleblower complaint.”
Neither the contents of the complaint nor the allegations against Gabbard have been revealed.
Gabbard wrote Saturday that the first time she saw the complaint was “when I had to review it to provide guidance on how it should be securely shared with Congress.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., speaking at a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, questioned why a whistleblower complaint against Tulsi Gabbard took eight months to reach Congress. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
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“As Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Warner knows firsthand that whistleblower complaints that contain highly classified and compartmentalized intelligence – even if they contain baseless allegations like this – must be secured in a vault, which Biden-era Inspector General Tamara Johnson did and her successor, Inspector General Chris Fox, has continued to do,” she continued. “After IC Inspector General Fox hand-delivered the complaint to the Gang of 8, the complaint was returned to a vault where it remains, consistent with any information of such sensitivity.”
She claimed that either “Warner knows these facts and is intentionally lying to the American people, or he has no idea how these things work and is therefore not qualified to serve in the United States Senate.”
Gabbard further wrote: “When a complaint is not found credible, the law provides no time limit for the provision of safety advice. The “21 day” requirement that Senator Warner claims I have not complied with only applies when a complaint is determined by the Inspector General to be both urgent AND apparently credible. This was NOT the case here.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard shakes hands with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
A representative for the inspector general said he had determined that some of the allegations in the complaint against Gabbard were not credible, while he had not made a decision on others, according to the Journal.
Gabbard said she was informed that she needed to provide security advice regarding the complaint filed by IC Inspector General Chris Fox on Dec. 4, “which he detailed in his letter to Congress.”
Afterward, she said she “took immediate action to provide security advice to the Intelligence Community Inspector General, who subsequently shared the complaint and referenced the intelligence with the relevant members of Congress last week.”
Closing her message, Gabbard once again accused Warner of spreading “lies and baseless accusations over months for political purposes,” which she said “undermines our national security and is a disservice to the American people and the intelligence community.”
Warner’s office told Fox News Digital Gabbard that Gabbard’s post was an “inaccurate attack that is entirely on brand from someone who has already and repeatedly proven she is not qualified to serve as DNI.”
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Republicans on the House and Senate intelligence committees backed Gabbard, with Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., writing on I agree with the two inspectors general who evaluated the matter: the complaint is not credible and the inspectors general and the DNI took the necessary steps to ensure that the information was handled and transmitted appropriately in accordance with the law.
He added: “To be frank, this looks like another effort by the president’s critics, inside and outside of government, to undermine policies they don’t like; 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.
