Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard pushed back hard Saturday against Democrat accusations that her office delayed sending a whistleblower complaint to Congress, calling the claims “baseless” and politically motivated.
Gabbard responded to criticism led by Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who suggested her office tried to bury the complaint. In a lengthy post, Gabbard said Warner and what she called the “Propaganda Media” falsely claimed she hid the complaint in a safe for months.
“I am not now, nor have I ever been, in possession or control of the Whistleblower’s complaint,” Gabbard wrote. She said the complaint was held by the Biden-era Intelligence Community Inspector General, Tamara Johnson, who was responsible for securing it.
The highly classified complaint, filed by a U.S. intelligence official alleging wrongdoing by Gabbard, was submitted last May to the intelligence community’s watchdog office and later reported on by the Wall Street Journal. According to the Journal, the complaint has been locked in a safe since it was filed, with one official warning that releasing its contents could cause “grave damage to national security.”
The whistleblower’s lawyer accused Gabbard’s office of slow-walking the case, an accusation her office rejected as “baseless and politically motivated.” Democrats also questioned why it took so long for the complaint to be referred to Congress.
Warner claimed the law required the complaint to be sent to Congress within 21 days and suggested there was an effort to “bury” it. Gabbard rejected that argument outright, saying the 21-day rule only applies if the inspector general determines the complaint is both urgent and apparently credible.
“When a complaint is not found to be credible, there is no timeline under the law for the provision of security guidance,” she said, adding that this complaint did not meet that standard.
Neither the contents of the complaint nor the specific allegations against Gabbard have been made public.
Gabbard said the first time she saw the complaint was when she was asked to provide guidance on how it should be securely shared with Congress. She explained that highly classified complaints must be stored in a safe, which was done first by Inspector General Johnson and later by her successor, Chris Fox. After Fox personally delivered the complaint to the “Gang of Eight,” it was returned to secure storage.
Gabbard didn’t mince words about Warner’s role in the controversy. She said either he knows the facts and is lying to the public or “doesn’t have a clue how these things work,” which she argued makes him unfit for the Senate.
An inspector general representative said some of the allegations in the complaint were not credible, while others have not yet been fully determined.
Gabbard said she was formally notified on Dec. 4 by Inspector General Fox that she needed to provide security guidance. She said she acted immediately, allowing the complaint and related intelligence to be shared with members of Congress last week.
She closed by accusing Warner of spreading lies for political gain, warning that his actions undermine national security and harm the intelligence community.
Warner’s office fired back, calling Gabbard’s statement an “inaccurate attack” and questioning her qualifications to serve as DNI.
Despite the political noise, the facts remain: the complaint was secured as required, reviewed under the law, and ultimately delivered to Congress. With national security on the line, Gabbard’s insistence on proper handling shows that following the rules still matters—and that truth has a way of cutting through the political theater.
