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director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard Denying any wrongdoing on Saturday, Democrats questioned why it took nearly a year for a whistleblower complaint filed against her last May to be submitted to Congress.
“(D-Va.) Sen. Mark Warner and his friends in the propaganda media have repeatedly lied to the American people that I or the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ‘hidden’ the whistleblower complaint in a safe for eight months,” Gabbard wrote in a lengthy X post on Saturday. “This is a blatant lie.”
She continued, “I do not, nor have I ever, owned or controlled the whistleblower complaint, so I obviously could not have ‘hidden’ it in a safe. Tamara Johnson, the Biden-era intelligence inspector general, had owned and protected the complaint for months.”
Eight months ago, a U.S. intelligence official submitted a highly classified complaint to U.S. intelligence agencies alleging misconduct by Gabbard. intelligence communityThe Wall Street Journal first reported the incident.
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Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard denied any wrongdoing on Saturday, and Democrats questioned why a whistleblower complaint filed against her last May took nearly a year to be presented to Congress. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The complaint has been locked in a safe since it was filed, and a U.S. official told the newspaper that disclosing its contents could “seriously harm national security,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Lawyers for the whistleblower accused Gabbard’s office of slow processing of the complaint, but her office denied that, calling it “baseless and politically motivated.”
Democrats, meanwhile, have questioned why it took her office so long to get the complaint to Congress.
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“The law is clear” Warnerthe top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday, adding that the complaint must be sent to Congress within 21 days of filing, NPR reported. “I think this is an effort to cover up the whistleblower complaint.”
Neither the contents of the complaint nor the charges against Gabbard have been disclosed.
Gabbard wrote Saturday that she first saw the complaint “when I had to review it to provide guidance on how to safely share it with Congress.”
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., spoke at a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, questioning why it took eight months for the whistleblower complaint against Tulsi Gabbard to reach Congress. (Kevin Dickey/Getty Images)
“As Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Warner knew all too well that whistleblower complaints containing highly classified and compartmentalized intelligence, even if they contained baseless allegations like this, must be kept in a safe deposit box, as Biden-era Inspector General Tamara Johnson did and her successor, Inspector General Chris Fox, continues to do,” she continued. “After IC Inspector General Foxx personally handed the complaint to the Gang of 8, the complaint was returned to the safe, consistent with any such sensitive information.”
She claimed that either “Warner knew these facts and knowingly lied to the American people, or he has no idea how these things work and is therefore unqualified to serve in the United States Senate.”
Gabbard further wrote, “The law does not provide a timeline for providing safety guidance when a complaint is found not to be credible. The ’21’ requirement that Senator Warner claims I failed to comply with only applies if the Inspector General determines that the complaint is both urgent and clearly credible. That is 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 Harnick/Getty Images)
A representative for the inspector general said it had determined some of the allegations in the complaint against Gabbard were not credible, but had not yet determined others, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Gabbard said that on Dec. 4, IC Inspector General Chris Fox told her that she needed to provide security guidance in response to the complaint, “which he detailed in a letter to Congress.”
She then said she “took immediate action to provide security guidance to the intelligence community’s inspector general, who last week shared the complaint and cited the intelligence with relevant members of Congress.”
Concluding her post, Gabbard once again accused Warner of “spreading lies and baseless accusations for political gain for months,” 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 that Gabbard’s post was an “inaccurate attack and solely an attack on a man who has proven repeatedly that he is unqualified to serve as director of national intelligence.”
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Republicans on both the House and Senate intelligence committees have backed Gabbard, with Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., writing on the
He added, “Frankly, this appears to be just another effort by the president’s critics inside and outside the government to undermine policies they don’t like; this is absolutely not a credible allegation of waste, fraud or abuse.”
Gabbard’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
