Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has come under fire for her role in an FBI raid on an election facility in Georgia that appeared designed to fuel Donald Trump’s debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Gabbard was on site Wednesday as Kash Patel’s FBI searched the Fulton County Election Hub and Operation Center, a warehouse-like facility outside Atlanta, and seized boxes of ballots and computers related to the 2020 election, Reuters reported.
The search warrant, which was obtained by ProPublica, also covered all the voter rolls from the 2020 election.
Former law enforcement officers told Reuters that it was unprecedented for a director of national intelligence to be present for that type of domestic law enforcement operation, while top Democrats blasted Gabbard’s involvement as a “political stunt.”
Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that if Gabbard really believed there was a foreign intelligence connection to the election probe, she had failed to communicate her concerns to congressional intelligence committees, as required by law.
The other option was that she was there “injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy.”
“Either is a serious breach of trust that further underscores why she is totally unqualified to hold a position that demands sound judgment, apolitical independence, and a singular focus on keeping Americans safe,” Warner said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Gabbard’s office for comment.
A senior administration official told CNN’s national security reporter Zachary Cohen that Gabbard was on scene because she “has a pivotal role in election security and protecting the integrity of our elections against interference, including operations targeting voting systems, databases, and election infrastructure.”
Last year, Gabbard formed a group of dozens of officials from across the federal government to help Trump enact his revenge campaign on his perceived enemies, Reuters reported.
In July, as the administration was facing widespread fury over the Justice Department’s failure to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, Gabbard announced she had uncovered a “treasonous conspiracy” and “years-long coup” against Trump involving top Obama administration officials.
Nothing ultimately came of the supposed revelations, but for a brief moment Trump crowned Gabbard the “hottest” person in his administration over the ultimately unfounded allegations.
With Fulton County, Gabbard has once again honed in on one of Trump’s obsessions during a politically fraught moment for the president, who is trying to contain a massive backlash after immigration agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis.
Trump has long tried to overturn his 2020 election loss, including demanding that Georgia’s top election official “find 11,780 votes” after Joe Biden narrowly won the state.
For years, he has maintained the election was “rigged,” a claim he repeated just last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“People will soon be prosecuted for what they did,” he said.
Thursday’s raid came as the Justice Department has sued dozens of states demanding copies of their voter rolls. The administration also sued Fulton County last month to try to get hold of the ballots.
