Complaint against Tulsi Gabbard could do ‘grave damage to national security’: Report

A whistleblower complaint alleging wrongdoing by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is so highly classified it’s being kept locked in a safe and still hasn’t been shared with Congress, according to an explosive report.

The Wall Street Journal described a “continuing, behind-the-scenes struggle” over how to assess and handle the complaint, with one official telling the newspaper that disclosure of its contents could cause “grave damage to national security.”

The whistleblower’s lawyer, Andrew Bakaj, has accused Gabbard of stonewalling the complaint; her office has rejected that claim and said it is working to resolve the issue.

The complaint was filed last May with the intelligence community’s inspector general, WSJ reported in its description of a November letter to Gabbard from Bakaj. It’s understood to also implicate another federal agency and to raise potential claims of executive privilege, suggesting possible White House involvement.

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In that letter, Bakaj accused Gabbard’s office of holding up the complaint from being provided to lawmakers by failing to provide security guidance on how to do so.

The inspector general is usually required to assess whether a complaint is credible within two weeks of receiving it, and if it’s deemed credible, to share it with lawmakers within another week. It is highly unusual for a complaint to be held back for more than six months.

An employee alleging wrongdoing is permitted to share the complaint directly with congressional intelligence committees, provided the director of national intelligence has given instructions on how to securely transmit it, a process that usually only takes a few weeks; Gabbard’s office has provided no such advice, which in effect has prevented the complaint from being shared, according to the report.

Members of the House and Senate intelligence panels first learned of the complaint in November, six months after it was filed, when a copy of Bakaj’s letter was shared with them, WSJ reports. Since then, Democratic staffers have tried unsuccessfully to learn more about it, congressional aides told the newspaper.

The complaint is so highly classified that Bakaj hasn’t been able to view it himself; a spokeswoman for Gabbard’s office confirmed that the complaint involved Gabbard but dismissed it as “baseless and politically motivated.”

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Gabbard had provided guidance to “support the eventual transmission of appropriate details to Congress,” the spokeswoman said, and had also answered written questions from the inspector general’s office.

As the chief of intelligence, Gabbard’s role typically focuses on overseeing the U.S. intelligence community’s 18 spy agencies, such as the CIA and the NSA, and making recommendations on national security matters.

Last week, she faced heated criticism for personally attending a recent FBI search of an election centre’s office in Fulton County, despite her role typically not being involved in such investigations.

Gabbard appeared somewhat discreetly at the raid last Wednesday, wearing a plain black coat and a baseball cap.

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“I think much of the American public, are quite reasonably alarmed and asking questions after the Director of National Intelligence was spotted, bizarrely and personally lurking in an FBI evidence truck in Fulton County, Georgia yesterday,” Senator Jon Ossoff said during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday.

Ossoff urged his colleagues on both sides of the aisle to figure out if Gabbard is “straying far outside of [her] lane.”

Intelligence employees and contractors have, in recent years, filed around a dozen “urgent concern” allegations annually with the inspector general, with this one appearing particularly serious.

“Some complaints involve exceptionally sensitive materials necessitating special handling and storage requirements,” a representative for the inspector general told WSJ, explaining why documents were being kept locked in a safe. “This case is one of them.”

Bakaj is well familiar with whistleblower procedures, having previously advised a CIA officer who filed a complaint in 2019 that catalyzed Trump’s first impeachment.