A whistleblower complaint against Donald Trump’s spy chief was flagged for being of “urgent concern” and was on its way to lawmakers before hitting a series of inexplicable snags that saw it hidden away in a safe.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was accused of playing games behind the scenes to keep the complaint under wraps, but a memo on the highly classified complaint obtained by The Associated Press now reveals the nature of the allegations against her.
Filed on May 21, 2025, by an intelligence official, the complaint alleged that Gabbard “restricted” distribution of a “highly classified intelligence report” for “political purposes,” according to the memo. It also alleged that officials with the DNI’s Office of General Counsel “failed to report a potential crime to the Department of Justice, also for political purposes.”
Lawmakers only learned of the document’s existence in November, when the whistleblower’s attorneys shared a letter with Congress accusing Gabbard of stonewalling disclosure of the complaint, which is currently locked in a safe at the office of the intelligence community’s inspector general, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The memo on the complaint has now been shared with members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, and copies of the complaint itself are due to be hand-delivered to the lawmakers this week.
After the complaint was first lodged, the acting inspector general of the intelligence community at the time quickly deemed it to be of “urgent concern” if it was found to be “true.” The anonymous whistleblower then gave the go-ahead for the complaint to be shared with congressional intelligence committees, in keeping with federal law on such complaints.
But just three days later, “newly obtained evidence” was presented that the inspector general found made the first allegation “not appear credible,” the memo states. The credibility of the second allegation was still an open question.
The inspector general also claimed the overall process of disclosure to lawmakers was delayed by the nature of the claims and last year’s government shutdown.
Gabbard’s office has said the complaint is “baseless and politically motivated.” It has previously called the WSJ’s reporting “not true,” “one of the most disgusting cases of clickbait I have ever seen,” a “nothingburger story” and “trash.”
Democratic Sen. Mark Warner has nevertheless blasted Gabbard for what he described as a willful frustration of disclosure to lawmakers, noting that it took “six months of negotiation with the director of national intelligence to share that whistleblower complaint.”
“This is in direct contradiction to what Gabbard testified during her confirmation hearings—that she would protect whistleblowers and share the information of timely matter,” Warner told the AP.
Trump has charged Gabbard with investigating his bogus claims of election rigging in the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden by 74 electoral college votes and 4.5 percent of the popular vote.
While Gabbard has been largely sidelined from other major Cabinet decisions during the MAGA leader’s first year back in office, she’s nevertheless been back in the spotlight over the past week.
Last Wednesday, she was spotted attending an FBI raid at an election facility in Fulton County, Georgia.
The county, which previously charged Trump with attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, has long served as a centerpiece of MAGA conspiracy theories about those polls.
The FBI’s removal of ballots, voting machine tapes, voter rolls and other records from the facility comes amid reports that MAGA officials have discussed the possibility of executive orders on voting ahead of this year’s midterms.
Gabbard has defended her presence at last week’s raid, writing to lawmakers that Trump had specifically requested she attend as part of her routine work with the FBI.
Warner has hit back in turn. “The director of national intelligence does not conduct criminal investigations,” he told AP. “She has no role in executing search warrants. And she does not belong on the scene of a domestic FBI search.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Gabbard’s office for comment on this story.
