Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard responded to criticism from Sen. Mark Warner and others that she allegedly “hid” a complaint from a whistleblower.
“Senator Mark Warner and his friends in the Propaganda Media have repeatedly lied to the American people that I or the ODNI ‘hid’ a whistleblower complaint in a safe for eight months,” Gabbard said in a post on X. “This is a blatant lie.”
A U.S. intelligence official alleged wrongdoing by Gabbard in the handling of a whistleblower complaint that was filed with the intelligence community’s inspector general in 2025, according to the official’s lawyer and Gabbard’s office. The official’s attorney, Andrew Bakaj, said the complaint was filed with the intelligence community’s inspector general in May and the whistleblower asked in June to share their complaint with lawmakers.
Warner, D-Va., is the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He told NBC News Thursday that Congress didn’t receive the complaint until February and that “much of it was redacted.”
The senator said that the monthslong delay to share the complaint with lawmakers showed that Gabbard is “either not competent to do the job, or if her legal advisors didn’t tell her she didn’t have competent legal advice.”
“This was, again, a complete avoidance of and I think it was an effort to try to bury this whistleblower complaint,” Warner said.
Gabbard addressed the criticism in a long post Saturday, writing that she is not, and never has been, in possession or control of the complaint. She said that the inspector general “was in possession of and responsible for securing the complaint for months.”
Gabbard said the first time that she saw the complaint was two weeks ago, “when I had to review it to provide guidance on how it should be securely shared with Congress.”
She said the complaint “contains baseless allegations,” but nonetheless needed to be secured in a safe, like all whistleblower complaints due to them containing “highly classified and compartmented intelligence.”
Gabbard went on to lay out a timeline in her post, writing that she first became aware of the complaint against her in June, but that neither former inspector general Tamara Johnson or current inspector general Christopher Fox — who started his role on Oct. 7 — found it to be credible.
Olivia Coleman, press secretary for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, confirmed in an email to NBC News that both inspector generals “did not find the complaint credible.”
Gabbard said that while she communicated with Inspector General Johnson during the investigation, she was not informed that the whistleblower wished to show the complaint to Congress and therefore did not issue security instructions to do so.
Gabbard said she was “made aware of the need to provide security guidance” by inspector general Fox on Dec. 4.
“I took immediate action to provide the security guidance to the Intelligence Community Inspector General who then shared the complaint and referenced intelligence with relevant members of Congress last week,” Gabbard wrote in her post.
“Senator Warner’s decision to spread lies and baseless accusations over the months for political gain, undermines our national security and is a disservice to the American people and the Intelligence Community,” the post continued.
Bakaj on Monday accused Gabbard of trying to hide the complaint from Congress.
“After nearly eight months of taking illegal actions to protect herself, the time has come for Tulsi Gabbard to comply with the law and fully release the disclosure to Congress,” Bakaj said in a statement released by Whistle Blower Aid, a nonprofit group representing employees of the government and private-sector aiming to uncover wrongdoing.
Coleman denied any wrongdoing by the director of national intelligence, writing in a post on Monday that the whistleblower was a “politically motivated individual.”
Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., who chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a post Tuesday that he concurred with the inspector generals’ conclusions that the complaint was not credible.
“The ensuing media firestorm—fed by speculation and little fact—was an attempt to smear @DNIGabbard and the Trump Administration,” Crawford wrote.
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