Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has denied withholding a whistleblower complaint from Congress, calling such claims from some “Gang of Eight” lawmakers “lies and baseless accusations.”
Gabbard issued a lengthy defense of her actions in dealing with the complaint, which dates back to May 2025 but was largely unknown until this week due to its highly sensitive nature. While details are thin, it accuses Gabbard of wrongdoing and alleges she withheld classified information “for political purposes.” Recent reporting has also revealed it was partly about an intelligence intercept of a call between two foreign nationals discussing someone close to President Donald Trump, a discussion that was about Iran.
“Senator Mark Warner and his friends in the Propaganda Media have repeatedly lied to the American people that I or the ODNI “hid” a whistleblower complaint in a safe for eight months. This is a blatant lie,” she posted on X on Saturday.
Gabbard said she has never been “in possession” of the complaint and “obviously” could not hide it in a safe, where it has been both before and after being hand-delivered to the Gang of Eight for solely a “read and return” review of its contents earlier this week. Gabbard also said the first time she saw it was just two weeks ago, when she reviewed it “to provide guidance on how it should be securely shared with Congress.”
She reiterated that neither the Biden-era inspector general of her office at the time the complaint was filed, Tamara Johnson, nor the current inspector general, Christopher Fox, have deemed the complaint to be credible. That conclusion from the two oversight heads notwithstanding, Gabbard maintained it still must be held in the safe because “the complainant chose to include highly sensitive information within the complaint itself rather than referencing the sensitive reporting and leaving the complaint at a lower level of classification.”
“Security standards for complaints that include such sensitive intelligence required the Inspector General to keep the complaint and the intelligence referenced secured in a safe from the time the complaint was made, until now,” she added.
Gabbard’s first public defense in dealing with the whistleblower complaint comes as she has been hammered by some “Gang of Eight” lawmakers over the monthslong delay in notifying Congress about the complaint.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), who is vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has led that charge, accusing her of stonewalling Congress.
“This was, again, a complete avoidance of and I think it was an effort to try to bury this whistleblower complaint,” Warner told NBC News on Thursday.
He has pressed Gabbard on a “21 day” requirement to give the complaint to Congress, which Gabbard said is only necessary if it is deemed “urgent” and credible.
“That was NOT the case here,” she added.
Gabbard also said Warner was only after “political gain” and that his claim of stonewalling “undermines our national security and is a disservice to the American people and the Intelligence Community.”
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The top Republican on that committee, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), has defended Gabbard’s handling of the complaint, saying her office “took the necessary steps to ensure the material has [sic] handled and transmitted appropriately in accordance with law.”
Cotton also deemed the complaint not credible, speculating that it “seemed like an effort by the president’s critics to undermine him.”
