Tulsi Gabbard, a 22-year service member, LtCol, and former congresswoman from Hawaii is, as most of us know, Donald Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Naturally, the announcement of the choice caused a bit of a stir. Still, Gabbard has always been a polarizing figure, and her defection to the ranks of Trump supporters and then Republicans as a party just fed the urban legend.
Gabbard already had a lot of friends on the Hill, thanks to their shared military service.
GOP Senator @MarkwayneMullin says he became friends with Tulsi Gabbard when she was a Democrat—they went to the gym every morning together
In a video, he tells her that questions about her qualifications are absurd: “I mean, you’re not Pete Buttigieg” pic.twitter.com/Qunu1Fwmjc
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) January 9, 2025
But she also has a ton of enemies, and they would be delighted to derail this appointment if they could.
The biggest black mark against her with people on both sides of the aisle has always been her 2017 unsanctioned visit to Bashar al Assad in Syria. Two years later, when she ran for president, it was a major distraction.
Hawaii Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is not the enemy of the United States, standing by her opposition to US involvement in that country’s civil war two years after she met personally with the accused war criminal.
“Assad is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States,” Gabbard said Wednesday morning on MSNBC.
…Gabbard met with Assad in Syria two years ago, saying at the time she “felt that it’s important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we can achieve peace.”
Gabbard’s appearance on MSNBC Wednesday morning came after she brought a Syrian Kurdish leader to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. Gabbard said they discussed her meeting with Assad and stressed the importance of meeting “with adversaries or potential adversaries, not just our friends, if we are serious about the pursuit of peace.”
And it resurfaced immediately when Trump nominated her. You can be sure, as Senate meet and greets wind down and next week’s confirmation hearings fire up, that Democrats will be laying for her.
They’ve already forced a delay in her hearing, claiming two days ago that Gabbard hadn’t turned in all the vetting materials required. Senate Republicans are crying foul.
Senate Democrats are forcing a delay in Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation hearing next week, claiming she hasn’t provided required vetting materials — while Republicans accuse them of playing games, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: It’s the first taste of what’s expected to be a drama-filled few weeks as the Senate takes up some of President-elect Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks.
- Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is balking at GOP requests to hold a hearing for Gabbard early next week, according to multiple sources familiar with the conversations.
- Gabbard, a former member of the House, is Trump’s pick for national intelligence director.
- Warner has pointed out that the committee has not yet received Gabbard’s FBI background check, ethics disclosure or a pre-hearing questionnaire, a source familiar with the matter told us. Committee rules require the background check a week in advance of a hearing.
Gabbard has also always been outspoken in her crusade against the surveillance state – against Big Brother all up in your business – even going so far as a congresswoman to introduce legislation to repeal a certain much-reviled section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – Section 702. Everyone should know what that is by now.
Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the U.S. government engages in mass, warrantless surveillance of Americans’ and foreigners’ phone calls, text messages, emails, and other electronic communications. Information collected under the law without a warrant can be used to prosecute and imprison people, even for crimes that have nothing to do with national security. Given our nation’s history of abusing its surveillance authorities, and the secrecy surrounding the program, we should be concerned that Section 702 is and will be used to disproportionately target disfavored groups, whether minority communities, political activists, or even journalists.
So it came as a surprise to some when word got out that Republican senators were willing to get behind Gabbard, but there would be one requirement – if they were going to vote for her confirmation as DNI, she would have to support Section 702, or she wasn’t getting the job.
Great to know they’ve got our backs.
NEW: According to Punchbowl News, Republican Senators are telling Tulsi Gabbard the only way she gets confirmed is if she vows to support FISA Section 702, which allows spying on American citizens without a warrant. pic.twitter.com/9oWrJVsV3M
— Suhr Majesty™ (@ULTRA_MAJESTY) January 10, 2025
This also flies in the face of what Donald Trump has said about the intelligence agencies spying on Americans. As a victim of their rabid and often illegal overreach himself, he wants that unlimited power dialed back stat.
I can’t imagine this happened without consultation from the big guy, but Gabbard has reversed her position, according to all the reports out this afternoon.
…“Section 702, unlike other FISA authorities, is crucial for gathering foreign intelligence on non-U.S. persons abroad. This unique capability cannot be replicated and must be safeguarded to protect our nation while ensuring the civil liberties of Americans,” Gabbard said in the statement to CNN.
“My prior concerns about FISA were based on insufficient protections for civil liberties, particularly regarding the FBI’s misuse of warrantless search powers on American citizens. Significant FISA reforms have been enacted since my time in Congress to address these issues. If confirmed as DNI, I will uphold Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights while maintaining vital national security tools like Section 702 to ensure the safety and freedom of the American people,” she added.
She’s says she can support Section 702 because the recent amendments to the statute have provided sufficient safeguards for citizens from abusive behavior going forward. Republican senators are dutifully rallying around the flagpole.
Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies, says she no longer opposes a key U.S. national-security surveillance power, removing a likely obstacle to her confirmation in the Republican-controlled Senate.
In doing so, however, Gabbard appeared to be potentially disagreeing with her possible future boss, Trump, who over the years has repeatedly nursed grievances against the spying program and urged lawmakers last year to dismantle it.
Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii nominated to be Trump’s director of national intelligence, has historically voted against a law known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which enables broad electronic surveillance of the communications of overseas national-security threats, such as terrorists and foreign spies.
Though considered vital to national security by intelligence officials, a diverse group of progressive and conservative lawmakers have long harbored resentment for the program because of how it allows some private data belonging to Americans to be collected and searched without a warrant. In 2020, while Gabbard was a House member, she introduced legislation that would have repealed the authority and other post-Sept. 11 spying capabilities.
Now, however, Gabbard is telling Republican senators—most of whom strongly support the law—that recent changes to the law have assuaged her previous civil-liberties concerns about Section 702 surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency.
“Tulsi Gabbard has assured me in our conversations that she supports Section 702 as recently amended and that she will follow the law and support its reauthorization as DNI,” Sen. Tom Cotton, the Republican chairman of the intelligence committee, said in a statement.
This is similar to how Mike Johnson as a Congressman spent two years yelling and screaming about the abuses of Section 702 and the urgent need for reform, only to become the biggest advocate of that power – with no reforms – once he became House Speaker.https://t.co/THKaNTjZ6I
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 10, 2025
I remember when Johnson came out of that SCIFF singing a totally different tune about extending the FISA authorization than when he went in. All I could think was, ‘What sort of voodoo did they do to this guy in there?‘
Honestly, it was one of the most amazing, abrupt, disheartening 180°s I’d ever seen.
Maybe Trump thinks he can bend to almost all it takes to get her on board?
They absolutely have to have every single Republican because there won’t be a Democrat that votes for her. Whatever Gabbard mouths about FISA, she is still, as Greenwald says, skeptical about the national security apparatus – CIA, NSA, FBI, etc – and Democrats will not stand for any questioning of the troops who do all their under-the-radar dirty work.
The Democrats do not like her at all.
So when the Senate finally gets her hearing date locked on, guaranteed it’s gonna be lit.
