Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is escalating his criticism of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, accusing her and the Trump administration of “going to war” with intelligence professionals and sacrificing the integrity of US intelligence “on the altar of partisan convenience.”
Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, plans to deliver a Senate speech Thursday warning of the dangers of the steps Gabbard has taken atop the US intelligence apparatus, according to excerpts of his remarks obtained by CNN.
“For months now, we’ve watched President Trump’s administration, led in this arena by his hand-picked Director of National Intelligence, Ms. Gabbard, systematically undermine the men and women whose only mission is to keep this country safe,” Warner will say, according to the remarks. “If we let politics dictate what intelligence is acceptable, we are effectively flying blind.”
This is not the first time Warner has criticized Gabbard, who was tapped by President Donald Trump to lead an intelligence community he openly distrusts and criticizes.
“Tulsi Gabbard is a threat to our national security and should be fired,” Warner posted on X last month, after Gabbard declassified documents related to the intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election, which Warner said was released for “clearly political purposes, without proper coordination with the agencies responsible for protecting sources and methods.”
Gabbard responded to Warner’s criticism last month by saying on Fox News that he “continues to be a reliable soldier” defending the intelligence community because she is working to “root out those deep state bad actors in the intelligence community.”
CNN has reached out to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for comment on Warner’s planned remarks.
In his speech, Warner intends to point to a litany of actions Gabbard and other Trump administration officials have taken, including the declassifying of documents that she claims reveal the assessment on Russian election interference was a hoax.
Democrats have accused Gabbard and Trump of using the Russia investigation documents to try to distract from the furor surrounding the Jeffrey Epstein files — and to punish his domestic political enemies.
Warner accused Gabbard of stripping the security clearances of 37 officials last month as a “transparently political act of vengeance.” The move, he said, amounted to “sweeping aside decades of experience with the stroke of a pen, and, in at least one case, exposing an official working under cover.”
The Virginia Democrat cited the firing of numerous intelligence officials, including the chairman and deputy chairman of the National Intelligence Council and the general leading the Defense Intelligence Agency, who were pushed out after producing assessments on Venezuela and Iran that angered the president.
Warner also derided the role that Laura Loomer, the controversial far-right activist, has played in successfully lobbying for intelligence officials to be dismissed.
“Time and again, we have seen senior officials pushed out of their posts because Ms. Loomer decided they were not sufficiently loyal to the president,” Warner plans to say. “These are critical posts in one of our most important intelligence organizations, vacated not because of misconduct or failure, but because of the whims of a political provocateur whose public record is filled with hate and conspiracies.”
Loomer’s criticism also led to the cancellation of an oversight visit Warner had planned to speak to officials at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Virginia.
Loomer said on X earlier this month that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency chief should be fired, declaring that the “fireside love fest with anti-Trump Democrat Senator @MarkWarner Mark Warner has been CANCELED!”
“What may be most astonishing is who seems to be calling the shots — not seasoned national security leaders, not career intelligence professionals, but conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer,” Warner plans to say, according to the excerpts.
“The safeguards we put in place, the oversight this body provides, only work if intelligence officers know that they can tell the truth without losing their jobs,” Warner will say. “If analysts believe their careers will be destroyed for offering inconvenient assessments, then we will only get the intelligence the White House wants.”