A defector working with Russian intelligence bragged to his handler that former national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard had “confirmed” his claims about U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine, hacked messages show.
The defector, former Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputy John Mark Dougan, sent the message on June 13, according to chats obtained by The Insider, an independent Russian investigative outlet.
Gabbard’s office had released declassified slides the day before, saying they documented U.S. funding for more than 120 biolabs in over 30 countries, including Ukraine.
“You see Tulsi Gabbard confirmed my biolabs findings?” Dougan wrote to a contact The Insider identified as his handler at Russia’s Federal Security Service.
The Insider described the release as Dougan’s “moment of triumph,” writing that Gabbard had endorsed information from his own investigation.
Dougan fled to Russia in 2016 after FBI agents searched his Florida home, and Russian intelligence services coordinated much of his work there, the outlet reported.
In 2024, The Washington Post reported that an officer in Russia’s military intelligence agency had funded Dougan, who has long claimed he works independently of the Russian government.
Russia’s military promoted Dougan’s biolabs claims in 2022, and four years later Moscow cited Gabbard’s release as backing for them.
In 2021, Dougan published his own biolabs investigation, which Russia’s Defense Ministry repeated almost word for word in March 2022, weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, The Insider reported.
That May, Yuri Khoroshenky, the same military intelligence officer, sent Dougan links to two stories pushing the claims.
“I would like to ask you to post both of them in your telegram channel,” Khoroshenky wrote. Dougan complied immediately, according to The Insider.
On June 19, a week after Gabbard’s release, Russia’s Defense Ministry said the declassified U.S. documents support Moscow’s claims that U.S.-funded labs in Ukraine carried out military-biological work.
“This is exactly what the [Russian] Defense Ministry and I have repeatedly spoken about,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
Critics on the right have twice accused Gabbard of spreading Russian propaganda over the biolabs claims, first in 2022 and again after her June release.
In March 2022, Gabbard said in a video that there were “25 to 30 US-funded biolabs in Ukraine.”
“Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives,” then-Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) wrote on X. Gabbard has said she was only raising concerns about the labs’ security, not accusing Ukraine or the United States of wrongdoing, the Kyiv Independent reported.
President Donald Trump nominated her to lead U.S. intelligence despite that criticism. In June, she wrote on X that her release supported “President Trump’s Executive Order to end federal funding of dangerous gain of function research around the world.” Gain-of-function research can make germs more contagious or deadly.
The claim Romney called Russian propaganda in 2022 returned this year as an official U.S. intelligence release tied to Trump’s own order.
Gabbard had declassified the slides in April but did not release them until June 12, three weeks after she announced on May 22 that she would resign.
“I have discovered evidence that [Gabbard] is directly peddling Russian government propaganda,” conservative activist Laura Loomer said after the release, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Loomer said several graphics in the release closely resembled materials Russian intelligence had already published, with the intelligence office’s branding added on top. Gabbard’s office declined to tell NOTUS where the documents came from.