Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is the subject of a whistleblower complaint involving material so classified, it’s been withheld from Congress for months and reportedly locked away in a safe as the Trump administration considers what to do with it.
The existence of the whistleblower complaint, filed last May, was reported in a bombshell Wall Street Journal article published Monday that refers to the situation as a “cloak-and-dagger mystery” befitting a spy novel. From the report:
The filing of the complaint has prompted a continuing, behind-the-scenes struggle about how to assess and handle it, with the whistleblower’s lawyer accusing Gabbard of stonewalling the complaint. Gabbard’s office rejects that characterization, contending it is navigating a unique set of circumstances and working to resolve the issue.
A cloak-and-dagger mystery reminiscent of a John le Carré novel is swirling around the complaint, which is said to be locked in a safe. … It also implicates another federal agency beyond Gabbard’s, and raises potential claims of executive privilege that may involve the White House, officials said.
In a statement to the Journal, a spokesperson for Gabbard’s office confirmed the existence of the complaint but called it “baseless and politically motivated.” The Journal quotes the whistleblower’s lawyer, Andrew Bakaj, who said it was “confounding for [Gabbard’s office] to take weeks — let alone eight months — to transmit a disclosure to Congress.”
The article reports that congressional staffers have been blocked in their efforts to gain access to it, a situation that a source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to MS NOW’s national security reporter David Rohde on Monday.
It’s unclear at this point whether or how the complaint will see the light of day under a Republican-led Congress that has shown little interest in conducting oversight of the Trump administration.
And as curiosity and worry spread in connection to the complaint itself — Gabbard has been known to promote Russian disinformation and is considered by several notable Democrats to be a likely Russian intelligence asset — all of this might be a tad less troubling had the current administration not undercut the credibility of inspectors general by firing so many of them a few months into President Donald Trump’s second term.
When Trump fired 18 inspectors general early last year, Gabbard followed his lead in May by replacing the general counsel for the intelligence community’s inspector general with one of her top advisers. Last October, Senate Republicans voted to confirm another Gabbard ally, Christopher Fox, as the new intelligence community inspector general.
During Fox’s confirmation, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan questioned the nominee about the role and expressed concern about Fox’s abilities to remain impartial, given his previous work for Gabbard. Fox responded that “senior adviser” is “just a title” and that he’s “dedicated to transparency and rebuilding public trust.”
That an former government employee’s concerns about his former boss apparently remain locked away from the public and from the representatives elected to serve on their behalf doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the whole “dedicated to transparency” thing.
