Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) stated Wednesday she is “appalled” by President-elect Trump’s selection of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) because the director of nationwide intelligence (DNI).
In a sequence of posts on the social platform X, Spanberger raised considerations about Gabbard’s nomination and urged her Republican colleagues to “speak out” in opposition to it.
“As a former CIA case officer, I saw the men and women of the U.S. intelligence community put their lives on the line every day for this country — and I am appalled at the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to lead DNI,” Spanberger wrote.
Spanberger known as Gabbard “ill-prepared and unqualified” for the function, saying she “traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar-al Assad and Vladimir Putin.”
“As a Member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am deeply concerned about what this nomination portends for our national security,” Spanberger added. “My Republican colleagues with a backbone should speak out.”
Spanberger joins a wave of lawmakers and former nationwide safety officers expressing considerations about Gabbard, who, as DNI, would oversee an company that helps coordinate actions amongst all 18 of the U.S. intelligence companies. The DNI can also be answerable for placing collectively the President’s Day by day Transient, arming the chief department with the data it must make key nationwide safety choices.
Gabbard has expressed beliefs that counter the conclusions drawn by U.S. intelligence, notably in the case of Russia and Ukraine. She may face an uphill battle for affirmation to the function, notably given criticism over being too aligned with Russian speaking factors.
A four-term Democratic congresswoman who ran in opposition to President Biden within the 2020 primaries, Gabbard left the Democratic Occasion in 2022 and, this yr, formally turned a Republican.
Her previous contains quite a few statements and actions which have prompted accusations she is peddling disinformation or may even be a Russian asset.
Gabbard has shared content material suggesting that the U.S. was concerned in Ukraine growing organic weapons — pushing a Russian narrative. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) stated on the time that she was “parroting Russian propaganda” and that her “treasonous lies may well cost lives.”
Gabbard in 2017 met with Syrian chief Bashar Assad, who was accused of utilizing chemical weapons on his personal residents throughout the nation’s civil warfare. The assembly triggered outrage amongst her fellow members of Congress.
Throughout her 2020 Democratic presidential marketing campaign, Gabbard argued Assad was not an enemy of america and declined to name him a warfare prison.
Rebecca Beitsch contributed.
