President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the nation’s spy chief may have weakened her chances of confirmation after she refused multiple times to deem ex-National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden a traitor to the country.
Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and an Army combat veteran, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday, around two months after Trump announced his intent to nominate her to be director of national intelligence. As DNI, Gabbard would be tasked with overseeing the nation’s nearly 20 spy agencies.
While in Congress, she co-sponsored legislation calling for espionage charges against Snowden to be dropped, working alongside then-Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. At the time, she praised Snowden for exposing the NSA’s mass surveillance programs in 2013.
“If it wasn’t for Snowden, the American people would never have learned the NSA was collecting phone records and spying on Americans. As president, I will protect whistle-blowers who expose threats to our freedom and liberty,” she wrote in 2019 during the Democratic presidential primary.
But Gabbard on Thursday distanced herself from Snowden, saying that his disclosures were unlawful and argued several times that there are legal avenues for whistleblowers to bring information to public awareness. But she evaded questions from senators on both sides of the political aisle asking if he was a traitor.
“There would have been opportunities for him to come to you on this committee, or seek out the [Inspector General] to release that information,” she said to Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the committee’s vice chair. “The fact is, he also, even as he broke the law, he released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs” occurring within the government, Gabbard added.
An exchange with Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., got particularly heated.
“This is where the rubber meets the road. This is when you need to answer the questions of the people whose votes you’re asking for to be confirmed as the chief intelligence officer of this nation,” he said. “Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America? That is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high.”
Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., and James Lankford, R-Ok., also asked if she considered Snowden a traitor.
“I’m focused on the future and how we can prevent something like this from happening again,” she told Lankford.
“Tulsi Gabbard will be required to disown all prior support for whistleblowers as a condition of confirmation today. I encourage her to do so. Tell them I harmed national security and the sweet, soft feelings of staff. In D.C., that’s what passes for the pledge of allegiance,” Snowden said in an X post in the hours leading up to her hearing on Thursday. After his surveillance disclosures, Snowden fled to Russia, and was later granted citizenship there in 2022.
Gabbard’s views on a contested surveillance power, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, also arose as a potential flash point from her days in Congress.
In 2020, she pushed to repeal the law, contending it enabled unwarranted access to Americans’ private communications. “Our civil liberties must be protected,” she said of her bill at the time, which ultimately failed to pass. “Join us in ensuring our constitutional rights remain intact.”
While she has recently reversed her position on Section 702, calling it crucial for national security, some lawmakers remain unconvinced about her shift.
Her stance has sparked bipartisan concern, with critics arguing that her position on surveillance could undermine her suitability for the intelligence role. Civil liberties groups and privacy advocates argue that Section 702 enables the intelligence community to bypass the Fourth Amendment by allowing collection of Americans’ communications when they incidentally interact with foreign targets. They have pushed for a warrant requirement to close that loophole.
She told committee members in writing that she supports a warrant requirement for the intelligence community to query data on U.S. persons, a view largely opposed by most of the panel and past intelligence officials, who have argued that a warrant would slow down timely national security investigations.
Gabbard said the decision of whether to add a warrant will be “yours to make” in reference to the intelligence committee.
“Admittedly, you’re not going to be a policymaker, but you certainly will inform us,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a strong 702 advocate, said. “You do agree that the courts have overwhelmingly held that a warrant is not required, correct?”
Warner told reporters that he’s anxious to talk to his Republican colleagues about whether they support Gabbard. “What message does that send to the [intelligence community]? What message does that send to our allies? More importantly, what message does that send to the American people?” he said of her responses. “I respect her service. I have huge issues with her judgment.”
The Intelligence Committee’s nine to eight Republican majority leaves Gabbard with no room for defections. As of Wednesday, she did not have the full support of GOP members on the panel, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about senators’ views.
“You will hear lies and smears that challenge my loyalty to and love for our country. Those who oppose my nomination imply that I am loyal to something or someone other than god, my own conscience, and the constitution of the United States, accusing me of being Trump’s puppet, Putin’s puppet, Assad’s puppet, a guru’s puppet, Modi’s puppet, not recognizing the absurdity of simultaneously being the puppet of 5 different puppet masters,” her opening remarks read.
Some of those accusations refer to a 2017 meeting Gabbard had with deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Documents from her office reviewed by The Washington Post this month reveal that her staff struggled to account for her time in Damascus and sought to adjust records to downplay the extent of her engagement with Assad. Initially, her office’s internal timeline indicated she met with Assad for nearly three hours, but in the report ultimately submitted to Congress, that duration was shortened to 90 minutes.
Staffers also considered merging the Assad meeting with other diplomatic encounters to make it appear part of a broader series of protocol discussions. The trip itself deviated from the approved itinerary, which had included no scheduled meetings with Syrian politicians.
On Ukraine, Gabbard’s past statements have drawn criticism from lawmakers who view her remarks as echoing Russian propaganda.
In the early days of Russia’s invasion in 2022, she suggested the conflict could have been avoided had the U.S. and NATO acknowledged Russia’s security concerns regarding Ukraine’s potential NATO membership. This position, along with praises of her made in Russian state media coverage, has fueled concerns about her alignment on key foreign policy issues.
Emails also revealed that, in October 2017, a Gabbard aide specializing in military affairs reached out to MIT physicist Theodore Postol, seeking his perspective on a well-documented chemical weapons attack, which U.S. intelligence agencies attributed to the Assad regime.
Postol, known for challenging official reports on military and security issues, had suggested the attack was staged by opposition forces. Gabbard’s interactions with Postol deepened over time, and his analyses reportedly influenced her skepticism of U.S. intelligence assessments on Syria.
Gabbard also faced scrutiny over a 2024 trip to the Vatican for a conference organized by a European businessman who appeared on an FBI watch list. While there is no indication she knowingly associated with individuals of concern, the trip led to her temporary inclusion in the TSA’s “Quiet Skies” security program, The New York Times reported this week.
DefenseOne Science and Technology Editor Patrick Tucker contributed to this report.
