Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence has told Democratic lawmakers she can’t share a top-secret whistleblower report concerning his son-in-law because the intel is privileged.
Tulsi Gabbard’s office told congressional staffers it would be unable to share an unredacted copy of the complaint “due to the assertion of executive privilege to portions” of the underlying intelligence, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The newspaper reports that Sen. Mark Warner and Rep. Jim Himes—two among the legislature’s Gang of Eight leaders, who are briefed on intelligence matters—wrote to Gabbard Tuesday asking who had asserted that privilege, and why.
The complaint is understood to concern Gabbard’s handling of information on an intercepted conversation between two foreign nationals regarding Jared Kushner, who’s married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
Kushner holds no official role in Trump’s second administration but has worked as an adviser to U.S.-led negotiations on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Trump officials say the contents of the intel are false but have declined to offer further specifics, insisting any disclosure could reveal key details of the government’s surveillance methods.
Experts described White House use of executive privilege to curtail intelligence sharing, and its reluctance to discuss non-administration figures, as unusual.
“Executive privilege is rarely used as a reason to not give information to the Gang of Eight,” Glenn Gertsell, former counsel to the National Security Agency, told the WSJ.
Gabbard has faced mounting scrutiny over the issues in recent weeks after it emerged she had taken receipt of the whistleblower’s complaint in May of last year.
According to a congressional memo, the complaint alleges “restricted” distribution of a “highly classified intelligence report” for “political purposes,” and that her office “failed to report a potential crime to the Department of Justice, also for political purposes.”
Gabbard’s office determined the whistleblower’s claims about restriction of intel did “not appear credible” and promptly locked the complaint in a safe, where it is thought to have remained for the past eight months.
The Daily Beast has contacted Gabbard’s representatives and the White House for comment on this story.
