The nation’s intelligence chief was purposely kept out of the loop on a top-priority, top-secret military operation.
The White House excluded Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard from months of talks regarding the U.S. invasion of Venezuela and capture of its President Nicolás Maduro, according to a new report from Bloomberg.
She was not included in the meetings due to past comments she made on Venezuela from her time in Congress. Gabbard’s exclusion was so intentional and known that some White House aides had joked that DNI stood for “Do Not Invite,” according to the report.
Gabbard, a one-time Democrat-turned-MAGA-goon, previously said in 2019 that the U.S. should “stay out” of the South American country.
“The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,” she wrote at the time. “Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders--so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”
Just last month, she called those wanting to enter the country “warmongers.”
Gabbard has since been called out for doing an about-face on Venezuela while working in the Trump administration. In a Jan. 6 post on X—three days after Maduro’s capture—Gabbard applauded the “flawless execution” of the military operation.
The White House released an image of Trump administration officials involved in the raid, which included President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
Gabbard, notably, was not among those pictured.
Vice President JD Vance addressed Gabbard’s reported exclusion during an extended press conference on Thursday. Vance, who was also not pictured in the photo released by the White House, insisted that both he and Gabbard were not kept out of the Venezuela operation.
“I’ve heard a couple of things. One, that I was kept out of the planning for the Venezuela operation—that’s false," Vance said. The White House’s Rapid Response account quoted the Bloomberg report on X with the vice president’s comments. He said that it was also “completely false” that Gabbard was left out. “My role is going to be whatever the president asks me to do.”
When asked by the Daily Beast for confirmation of her absence, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung did not directly deny that she was excluded, but said in a statement, “President Trump’s Peace through Strength foreign policy is a tried-and-true approach that keeps America safe and deters global threats. Efforts by the legacy media to sow internal division are a distraction that will not work. President Trump has full confidence in DNI Gabbard and she’s doing a fantastic job.”
Cedric Leighton, a retired US Air Force intelligence colonel, told Bloomberg that it is “highly unusual for the DNI not to be involved in any of these operations, especially something like Venezuela.”
“The visuals from that picture are a perfect description of what’s going on to Tulsi Gabbard at this point,” he told the outlet.
The ODNI did not return the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
The Bloomberg report comes as other indications emerge that Gabbard is on shaky ground with the Trump administration. One person familiar with the matter told The Washington Post that Gabbard is no longer in Trump’s inner circle.
“It seems pretty obvious that she was not part of this [Maduro mission] and has not been part of the inner circle for some time, if ever,” a former intelligence official told the outlet. “She is an isolationist, and Trump is some kind of weird imperialist.”
Her exclusion from this operation is not the first time the president has shown disrespect for his intelligence chief. The president publicly undermined Gabbard in June after the U.S. launched a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Gabbard testified in March that Iran’s nuclear program was not close to developing a bomb. Following the strike, Trump flatly said “She’s wrong,” when asked about Gabbard’s prior assessment.
He also said, when further pressed about Gabbard’s testimony conflicting with his claims that Iran’s nuclear program was close to developing a bomb, “I don’t care what she says.”
Prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket have Gabbard at around a 50 percent chance of leaving the Trump administration this year.
