President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the nation’s top spy chief faced a volley of combative questions from Democrats at her nomination hearing Thursday, while some Republicans also treated her with skepticism.
Tulsi Gabbard came prepared for scrutiny and lost no time in going on the offensive.
She vowed to end what she described as political bias in the intel community, and called the attacks on her record “lies and smears.”
Gabbard is widely viewed as Trump’s most vulnerable Cabinet nominee remaining and her confirmation could hinge on her performance at the hearing. She is not expected to draw support from any Democrats on the spy panel and at least two Republicans on the committee are potential “no” votes.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in his opening statement that Gabbard may be so unqualified to be director of national intelligence that having her serve in the role would violate the very law establishing it.
He noted that the law creating the DNI position requires the nominee to have “extensive national security expertise.” As such, “I continue to have significant concerns about your judgment and your qualifications to meet the standard set by the law,” Warner said in his opening statement.
Gabbard has never held a formal role in the U.S. intelligence community. However, she is an Iraq war veteran, has spent more than two decades in the military, and served on the House Armed Services Committee while in Congress. If confirmed for the role, she would preside over more than a dozen U.S. spy agencies and oversee roughly $100 billion in intelligence programs.
At the start, Republicans inside the hearing room painted a starkly different picture of Gabbard.
They cast her as a patriot whose iconoclastic foreign policy views have been misrepresented by Democrats and the press as evidence she is a puppet of foreign powers. In the past, Gabbard has repeated inaccurate Kremlin talking points on the presence of U.S. bioweapons labs in Ukraine, blamed NATO for Russia’s invasion there and questioned U.S. intelligence assessments about the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) acknowledged Gabbard’s “unconventional views,” but characterized her as free thinker who can push back on the type of mainstream foreign policy thinking that has dragged the country into disastrous wars abroad.
“Maybe Washington could use a little more unconventional thinking,” Cotton said in his opening statement.
Gabbard used her opening statement to blast a laundry list of alleged failures by the U.S. intelligence community, including the investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 election, the intelligence assessments that led to the Iraq war, and the letter from 51 former U.S. intelligence officials that warned Hunter Biden’s laptop was part of a Kremlin disinformation plot.
“What truly unsettles my political opponents is I refuse to be their puppet,” she said.
But a number of the lawmakers on the panel said their concerns were about much more concrete issues.
One particularly explosive moment of the hearing was sparked by Gabbard’s refusal to call former NSA contractor Edward Snowden a traitor — provoking a stream of questions from Republicans and Democrats on the panel alike.
After Gabbard sidestepped a definitive answer on Snowden when asked about him by Sens. James Lankford (R-Okl.) and Michael Bennet (D-Col.), the usually soft-spoken Democrat tore into her.
“Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America?” Bennet said, his voice rising. “That is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high.”
Two minutes later, following a flood of attacks on Gabbard’s statements not only on Snowden but also on her comments suggesting that Ukraine was to blame for the Russia invasion, Bennet jabbed at her again.
“The record is going to be very clear about the position you took with regard to Edward Snowden and the record is going to be very clear about your reaffirmation of the statements you made in the middle of the night when Russia was invading the free country of Ukraine,” Bennet said, referring Gabbard to the social media post in which she had suggested responsibility for the Russian invasion of Ukraine lay with NATO.
Later, Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), viewed as one of the possible GOP no’s on the narrowly divided panel, also expressed unnerve by Gabbard’s deflections on Snowden. “I think it would befit you and be helpful to the way you are perceived by members of the intelligence community, if you would at least acknowledge that the greatest whistleblower in American history, so called, harmed national security by breaking the laws of the land around our intel authority,” he said.
At another point, Republican Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, who has kept mum about his views on Gabbard, said he wanted to make certain that Russia would not “get a pass in either your mind or your heart” in any decision she made as DNI.
“Senator, I’m offended by the question,” Gabbard responded. “If confirmed, no country, group or individual will get a pass.”
A flashpoint for Democrats and Republicans alike was Gabbard’s view on a controversial surveillance authority — often referred to in shorthand as Section 702 — that many on the spy panel consider the intelligence community’s most valuable spy tool.
Gabbard, a privacy hawk while in Congress, previously opposed the law — which allows for surveillance of communications of foreigners abroad — because it can sweep up communications from American citizens. But she flip-flopped after meeting with panel members who are committed to the law in recent weeks.
Pressed on the issue at various points in the hearing, Gabbard appeared to offer conflicting answers about whether she really supports the law as is or wants to install greater privacy safeguards around it — a position that landed differently among the members.
“You said the reforms now make you supportive. What can you cite, which reforms?” Warner pressed Gabbard at one point.
For Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the panel’s leading privacy advocate, Gabbard’s openness to consider reforming Section 702 to better protect Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights produced one of her most promising moments with a panel Democrat.
“You are being very helpful by moving so quickly,” Wyden responded after her answer.
One of the biggest questions swirling around Gabbard’s candidacy heading into the hearing was a trip she took in 2017 to meet with recently deposed Syrian President Bashar al Assad.
Gabbard has defended the secret meeting with Assad — a pariah in Washington at that time — by saying she was transparent about it with U.S. officials, and it offered a chance to bring a speedier resolution to Syria’s brutal civil war. But, she revealed for the first time at the hearing that the meeting didn’t produce any concessions. “No, and I didn’t expect to,” she said.
She also forcefully denied ever meeting with senior Hezbollah fighters during the trip, calling it an “absurd accusation.”
Under questioning from Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) at another point in the hearing, Gabbard clarified who she thinks is responsible for the war in Ukraine: “Putin started the war in Ukraine,” she said.
Gabbard did have some standout moments, at one point deftly flipping skepticism of her coziness toward Assad on its head.
“I shed no tears for the fall of the Assad regime,” she said, in response to questions from Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.). “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 911 attack.”
Along with Young, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is viewed as a possible downvote on Gabbard. She didn’t tip her hand Thursday, though her questions were not sharp-edged.
Coming out of the hearing, it appears Gabbard’s candidacy will sink or swim with Republicans largely on her policy views rather than her past actions or her inexperience.
Cotton said at the start of the hearing that Gabbard has undergone five FBI background checks and he spent two hours last week pouring through more than 300 pages worth of them.
“It’s clean as a whistle,” he said.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misspelled Sen. Mark Kelly’s name.
