Tulsi Gabbard faced her first test as a nominee to be the next director of national intelligence during her confirmation hearing on Thursday before a key Senate panel, but it’s unclear if her testimony was enough to consolidate the support she needs to advance out of the committee onto the Senate floor.
Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman and 2020 presidential candidate, left the Democratic Party in 2022. She supported President Donald Trump in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, announcing she was joining the Republican Party and being rewarded for her backing by getting nominated to serve as the leader of the country’s 18 intelligence agencies.
Senators on the intelligence panel dove into her record from the eight years she spent in Congress, dissecting her previous comments about a range of subjects including infamous leaker Edward Snowden, the now-defunct Assad regime in Syria, and her previous criticism of a key law for intelligence collection.
Snowden, Snowden, Snowden
Gabbard’s responses to questions about National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden ultimately became the hearing’s biggest flashpoint. She repeatedly refused to call Snowden a traitor during her confirmation hearing on Thursday, even as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle gave the former Democratic congresswoman more than a half-dozen chances to withdraw her past support of Snowden.
During the hearing, Gabbard said Snowden, the former NSA contractor responsible for one of the most damaging leaks of sensitive U.S. intelligence, “broke the law” but repeatedly declined to call him a “traitor.” She also indirectly defended Snowden, saying he “exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government,” statements that even Republicans took issue with.
“The fact is, he also, even as he broke the law, released information that exposed egregious, illegal, and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government,” Gabbard said of Snowden during the hearing.
Her previous support of Snowden, going as far as to introduce a resolution with former Rep. Matt Gaetz calling for all charges to be dropped against him, became a contentious topic for lawmakers after her repeated refusal to call him a traitor, even when asked directly.
She also had previously praised Snowden on social media as recently as 2020, when she said “brave whistleblowers exposing lies & illegal actions in our government must be protected” and that Snowden “should be pardoned.”
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said the intelligence community wanted to hear her denounce him as a traitor “because it’s a big deal for everybody who you will oversee as well,” but she repeated the line she had said earlier, which was that he “broke the law.”
Following the hearing, Lankford said Gabbard’s response to the Snowden questions was a “surprise.”
“I was surprised, yeah, because that doesn’t seem like a hard question,” Lankford said, speaking to reporters on Wednesday afternoon. “It wasn’t intended to be a trick question.”
In the most contentious moment, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) challenged Gabbard over her refusal to call Snowden a traitor, saying, “This is when rubber hits the road.”
“This is not a moment for social media,” Bennet said. “It’s not a moment to propagate conspiracy theories. This is when you need to answer questions of the people whose votes you’re asking for.”
Snowden himself posted on social media on Thursday morning, posting on X and encouraging Gabbard to “disown all prior support for whistleblowers,” including himself. The post was brought up by Sen. Todd Young (R-IN), a critical swing vote, who said it was a “rare instance” when he agreed with the former contractor who leaked U.S. intelligence.
Lawmakers kept referring to Gabbard’s refusal to answer the question, likely making the topic a more revisited subject than anticipated.
“I don’t know that there was really anything new there, except it was interesting to see my colleagues on the Republican side, you know, try to open a door with Edward Snowden that she really couldn’t walk through,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), speaking to reporters following the hearing.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), who indicated he is inclined to support Gabbard, said he was unsure if Gabbard swayed any of the senators on the fence during the closed portion of the hearing.
“I think other members are going to have to speak for themselves as they go to that. Yeah, for me I think she did a nice job in the closed session,” Rounds said to reporters.
Syria and Lebanon trips scrutinized
Gabbard took a trip to Syria in 2017, while she was in Congress, where she met with the nation’s then-leader, Bashar Assad, whose regime collapsed late last year after a more than five-decade rule. At the time, she was also skeptical of U.S. and international concerns that Assad had used chemical weapons in attacks on his own people.
She did defend taking the trip, telling lawmakers that the country “can benefit greatly by going and engaging boots on the ground, learning and listening and meeting directly with people, whether they be adversaries or friends.”
Heinrich asked for details of her meeting with Assad given few details have been released.
“I asked him tough questions about his own regime’s actions, the use of chemical weapons and the brutal tactics that were being used against his own people,” Gabbard said, later acknowledging that she didn’t get any concessions from him, nor did she expect to.
“I shed no tears for the fall of the Assad regime, but today we have an Islamist extremist who is now in charge of Syria, as I said, who danced on the streets to celebrate the 9/11 attack, who ruled over Idlib with an Islamist extremist governance,” she explained.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) pressed Gabbard over her previous statements in which she expressed doubt that Assad had used chemical weapons against Syrian civilians during the country’s civil war. Kelly asked her directly if she believed Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people.
“Yes and I’m on the record with that broad assessment,” Gabbard said, though she stood by her questioning of two of the chemical attacks, saying an MIT professor who raised doubts had some “credible questions.”
Kelly asserted that Gabbard’s skepticism of U.S. intelligence did not extend to the work of the professor.
U.S. intelligence intercepted a phone call between two Hezbollah operatives who said that Gabbard had met with “the big guy,” during her 2017 visit, which is believed to represent a senior Hezbollah official, the New York Times reported.
Gabbard also denied allegations that she met with Hezbollah officials during a trip to Lebanon and called the accusation “absurd.”
Changing stance on Section 702
Gabbard, during her time in Congress, was a vocal opponent of Section 702 in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which grants the United States the authority to conduct warrantless surveillance of non-U.S. citizens located abroad.
She argued at the time that she had privacy concerns, but it was also a key way for the intelligence community to gather and pursue intelligence. Gabbard changed her stance on the subject in recent weeks, but maintains that it could pose a risk of violating Americans’ civil liberties if gone wrong.
The DNI hopeful called 702 “a unique security tool and capability that is essential for our national security” and said, “There are a number of areas that we would be blind from a national security perspective without this capability,” but she noted, “It also must exist next to having safeguards in place to ensure Americans’ civil liberties are protected.”
While in Congress, Gabbard introduced legislation to fully repeal this authorization.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the top Democrat on the committee, said he didn’t find her “change of heart” regarding 702 to be “credible.”
The law was reauthorized for two additional years in 2024 after months of debate over whether law enforcement should be required to obtain a warrant to search the collected data for Americans’ information.
Lawmakers pressed Gabbard on whether she would support a warrant requirement under the law. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a major privacy hawk, has been a proponent of reforming the surveillance act.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and most other members of the panel oppose such requirements. Gabbard didn’t directly answer the question, saying if confirmed, she would be in a better position to offer an assessment.
However, in written answers to a questionnaire sent to the committee, she would like the FBI to obtain a warrant for probable cause before gathering intelligence under Section 702, putting her view in opposition with many Republicans on the panel.
Does she have the numbers to advance?
The Republican Party has a 53-47 majority in the upper chamber, which means any of Trump’s Cabinet nominees can only afford to lose three Republicans’ support and still get confirmed. For Gabbard, even getting to a full Senate vote could be a challenge.
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The Intelligence Committee has a 9-8 GOP majority and will vote to send her nomination to the Senate floor for a full vote. She can only afford to lose one Republican’s support and still survive the committee vote unless she unexpectedly garners support from at least one Democrat.
Sens. Young and Susan Collins (R-ME) are the two critical swing votes on the panel. Both have been skeptical of her views on Snowden, and it’s unclear if her statements on Thursday quelled their concerns.
