The White House denied reports that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is next, after President Trump ousted Attorney General Pam Bondi on Thursday. White House communications director Steven Cheung said Trump has “total confidence” in Gabbard “and any insinuation otherwise is totally fake news” in a post on the social platform X on Thursday. … Source link
One might be tempted to think that the most shameless shape-shifter in the Trump administration is JD Vance. After all, the vice president once called Donald Trump America’s Hitler, and ten years later, he is one of the president’s most ardent supporters. But Vance is a piker compared to the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. No one in American politics is more brazenly hypocritical — and considering the contenders in the Republican Congress, that’s saying something. Gabbard appeared last week before the House Select Intelligence Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee and, along with FBI Director Kash Patel and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, delivered the worldwide threats assessment. But most of the questions were about the war in Iran. Prior to joining the Trump administration, she was known for her strident and uncompromising anti-war philosophy. In fact, when she ran for president in 2020 while serving as a congresswoman for Hawaii’s second district, her platform was explicitly built around an anti-Iran war message. Gabbard’s testimony was of particular interest because, prior to joining the Trump …
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. After ordering the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani killed in 2020, Donald Trump claimed that the military officer had been “plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel.” But that justification didn’t pass muster with then–Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard had long been explicit in her insistence that a president cannot unilaterally decide to attack another country in anticipatory self-defense. She’d even co-sponsored the No More Presidential Wars Act in 2018, which stated that the president must “seek congressional authorization prior to any engagement of the U.S. Armed Forces against Syria, Iran, or Russia.” It was not surprising when, in spite of Trump’s determination that Soleimani had posed an imminent threat, Gabbard insisted that the president had “committed an illegal and unconstitutional act.” Gabbard also warned that a war against Iran in particular would be “so costly …
Tulsi Gabbard used to champion whistleblowers. As a member of Congress, she believed leaks were a necessary tool in revealing illegal actions taken by the government, and took principled, controversial stands opposing the prosecution of Julian Assange and supporting the pardon of my client Edward Snowden. But Gabbard’s principles went out the door when she joined Donald Trump’s administration as director of national intelligence. She helped lead an anti-leak hysteria that is taking over the federal government. And now, someone is blowing the whistle on her. Because of Gabbard’s past support of whistleblowers, increased public profile as DNI and ongoing rumors concerning the state of her relationship with Trump, which has appeared to be in constant flux, this case has attracted substantial media attention since it was first revealed by the Wall Street Journal on Feb. 2. The story has many layers, and the media has missed several key points involving Gabbard’s conflict of interest and how the whistleblower system has been an abject failure. “Exquisitely” classified As an attorney who represented Thomas Drake, one …
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence says it obtained and examined electronic voting machines in Puerto Rico last year to look for possible security vulnerabilities. Authorities in Puerto Rico voluntarily handed over the equipment to ODNI, which wanted to evaluate the risk to the machinery given that “similar infrastructure is used throughout the United States,” an ODNI spokesperson said in an email. News of the move by the office overseen by Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, follows President Donald Trump’s calls to “nationalize” future elections and have the federal government “get involved” in some states where he says there is a risk of fraud. Reuters first reported the ODNI’s action in Puerto Rico. Gabbard says Trump instructed her to be present last week at an FBI search of an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, where agents seized ballots from the 2020 election. Trump, who lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, has falsely claimed the election was “rigged” against him and has said that investigations will verify his claims. Under …
