President Donald Trump’s public rebuke of his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, raised questions about her standing in the administration — and Trump’s trust in the American intelligence community.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans are largely waving off any insinuation of division between Trump and his top officials, though Gabbard herself hasn’t convinced every Republican of her value.
“I still have the same concerns about her as I had back when she began,” Sen. Jerry Moran, whose confirmation hearing questioning of Gabbard over her views on Russia made headlines earlier this year, told NOTUS. “I was hoping she would demonstrate her worth or her value, and I’m still waiting to see if that’s the case.”
Moran said that while he’d seen the reports about Trump and Gabbard, he hadn’t been able to ask about them.
Gabbard’s meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee last Thursday was cancelled. House and Senate briefings with Gabbard and other top intelligence officials slated for Tuesday were also postponed. Per reports, the Senate intelligence briefing has been rescheduled for Thursday and a House briefing is now scheduled to take place Friday.
Questions of Gabbard resurfaced when Trump, asked to answer for her March testimony that Iran was “not building a nuclear weapon,” said, “I don’t care what she said.”
Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee mostly defended Trump and Gabbard after the president’s comments.
“I was there when she gave her testimony, and I can just tell you that it is not contradictory, but it may have been inconsistent,” Sen. Mike Rounds said. “There really is an explanation why.”
Gabbard, for her part, said her testimony was being taken out of context, clarifying in the lead up to the U.S. strikes against Iran that intelligence shows Iran is capable of building a nuclear weapon in the matter of “weeks” or “months.”
The implications of this confusion — and insinuations of discord between the president and his top intelligence officials — can have wide-reaching effects. The United States is an integral part of intelligence-sharing communities that include Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
On Tuesday, the White House again questioned U.S. intelligence on Iran — this time, a leaked report from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, reported on by CNN and The New York Times, which said the U.S. strikes in Iran hadn’t “totally obliterated” the country’s nuclear capabilities, but rather set them back.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he was concerned about the “confusion and chaos” that comes from the president’s comments.
“That threatens the intelligence community if the president of the United States says that he’s not going to pay attention to the DNI,” Blumenthal said. “It’s not my opinion that’s important, it’s the president’s. He seems to be losing confidence in her.”
Republicans waved away any concerns. Sen. Markwayne Mullin said that he talks to both Trump and Gabbard often and that there “isn’t any daylight” between the two.
“What was brought up in March to where she’s at today was just simply based on intel gathering,” Mullin said. While he wasn’t in the Situation Room for the Iran strike, Mullin said he’s talked to both Trump and Gabbard since.
“I think she answered the questions to the best of her ability at the time,” Sen. Tim Sheehy said. “I don’t think there’s any air gap there. I think you can word-parse anything. I don’t think there’s any authentic policy gap there.”
For now, Democrats say they’ve seen the White House make a point to highlight Gabbard’s involvement, as to indicate that all is in line between intelligence officials and the White House.
“The administration is making a point of saying that she’s being included in all of these meetings,” Sen. Ron Wyden told NOTUS. “So they’re obviously trying to make the case that she’s very involved.”
As for the leaked report, however, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN it was “an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community.”
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John T. Seward is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.