Trump’s intel pick Tulsi Gabbard to face Senate grilling on past positions

President Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence is expected to face sharp questioning from Senate Democrats and Republicans during a Thursday confirmation hearing on her past positions supporting foreign adversaries and damaging intelligence disclosures.

Former House member Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii Democrat turned Republican, is one of Mr. Trump’s more unorthodox nominations.

Ms. Gabbard signed on to the Make America Great Again movement after switching to the Republican Party in late October, two weeks before Election Day. If confirmed, she will head the umbrella office overseeing the work of some 18 U.S. intelligence agencies and be privy to some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets.

Her last-minute political conversion raised concerns among some conservatives about her past liberal positions, including support for socialist Sen. Bernard Sanders in his 2016 presidential campaign and defense of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.

Mr. Snowden fled to Russia after disclosing what the NSA said were an estimated 1.7 million classified documents, only a few related to domestic NSA surveillance activities, a suspected motive of the whistleblower.

Former intelligence officials also have questioned whether Ms. Gabbard is qualified for the sensitive intelligence post based on her lack of experience and her past public support for American adversaries such as Russia and North Korea.

The nominee also has past statements supportive of Syria’s Bashar Assad and left-wing political groups and policies.

KeyWiki’s webpage on the nominee says Ms. Gabbard advocated or voted in Congress for anti-police policies in the aftermath of the George Floyd death, decriminalizing prostitution, supporting the Green New Deal environmental agenda, banning oil fracking, and favoring slavery reparations for Black Americans.

Clean as a whistle

Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, will preside over the nomination hearing. He said Sunday that his panel scheduled the hearing after receiving reports on her background investigation and financial disclosure statement.

Mr. Cotton said Ms. Gabbard’s background investigation showed “she is clean as a whistle” and, whatever her views on policies and laws are, she would “faithfully execute the president’s agenda.”

Mr. Cotton said on “Fox News Sunday” that the hearing will be “full” and similar to those for other Democratic and Republican nominees. “No more, no less.”

Mr. Cotton said he understands the senators’ concerns.

“I do hope that we won’t see anyone questioning her patriotism,” Mr. Cotton said, noting that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton once called Ms. Gabbard a traitor.

Minority Senate Democrats are expected to overwhelmingly oppose Ms. Gabbard’s nomination. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, took aim at Ms. Gabbard in floor remarks Wednesday.

“Of all people President Trump could have nominated for the job of DNI, few could be worse for our national security ​than Tulsi Gabbard,” Mr. Schumer said. “If confirmed, Ms. Gabbard would be a walking liability to our intelligence community and our national security. She has a long and troubled history of spreading falsities and sympathizing with the likes of Vladimir Putin and Assad.”

Mr. Schumer said, “It’s not unreasonable to ask if Ms. Gabbard would use the DNI job to push false intelligence for political ends.”

News reports quoting congressional sources suggest some believe Ms. Gabbard may lack the votes to be approved by the intelligence committee.

Standing firm

Despite the opposition, the White House is sticking with Ms. Gabbard.

“Tulsi Gabbard has dedicated her life to serving our country both in uniform as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves and as member of Congress,” National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement.

“President Trump has made clear he needs his national security team in place to ensure our nation is safeguarded from threats both home and abroad.”

Still, the former congresswoman will have a lot to explain Thursday.

On North Korea, Ms. Gabbard has said the United States is to blame for Pyongyang’s refusal to give up its nuclear weapons. She tweeted in 2019: “In order to de-escalate nuclear crisis with NK, we need to understand why [North Korean leader Kim Jong-un] is holding on so tightly to their nuclear weapons. It is because he sees them as his only deterrent from the US coming in and trying to topple his regime.”

Senators are expected to explore Ms. Gabbard’s defense of Mr. Snowden. In 2019, while running for the Democratic nomination for president, she said the massive leaks, which U.S. officials say compromised NSA electronic spying capabilities, had a positive impact.

In Congress, Ms. Gabbard sought legislation to stop what she said were abuses and violations of the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

In 2020, during her presidential campaign, Ms. Gabbard received an endorsement from Russian ultranationalist Aleksandr Dugin, considered the ideological light behind Mr. Putin’s authoritarian regime.

John Schindler, a former NSA counterintelligence official, said Ms. Gabbard’s nomination raises significant counterintelligence questions, including why she adopted positions that appear pro-Putin and pro-Assad and apparently lied about a trip to Syria in 2017 when she met ​Mr. Assad.

“What were those vexing 2017 NSA [signals intelligence] intercepts about that trip, just revealed by The New York Times, really about?” he asked, suggesting the trip may have been why her name was placed on the federal terrorism watch list. “None of these are show-stopping events, by themselves, but they certainly merit Senate questions when Gabbard appears before the Senate intelligence committee on Thursday.”

Ms. Gabbard has said Mr. Trump’s decision in January 2020 to order a drone strike that killed Iranian military leader Qassem Soleimani was an act of war. Mr. Trump said at the time Soleimani was plotting attacks on American diplomats and military personnel.

Ms. Gabbard said in 2023 that she opposed Japan’s rearmament in the face of growing threats from China. In January 2024, Tokyo signed a contract with the United States to buy 400 Tomahawk land attack missiles with enough range to hit targets throughout northeast China.

“We need to be careful that shortsighted, self-serving leaders do not end up bringing us again face-to-face with a remilitarized Japan,” Ms. Gabbard said on X.

A former U.S. official who opposes Ms. Gabbard’s nomination said she has a well-established track record of favoring leftist and anti-U.S. policies.

“This is her whole adult life’s pattern of knee-jerk anti-Americanism, anti-defense, supine-peace-niki — and as far as the research can establish, her network of friends, surfer pals, funders, colleagues and co-sponsors are similarly of the extreme left,” the former official said, speaking on background to avoid any retaliation from the Trump administration.

New Zealand author Trevor Loudon included a chapter on Ms. Gabbard in his 2020 book, “White House Reds.”

The book argued that Ms. Gabbard was a relatively conservative Democrat who moved leftward during her House career. Mr. Loudon noted that she had a close relationship with the Marxist U.S. group Democratic Socialists of America and joined Mr. Sanders’ Congressional Progressive Caucus while in the House.