Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump's nominee for director of national intelligence, faced a contentious confirmation hearing on Thursday, and one of her responses left a Republican senator with "a lot of questions."
Several Senators on the Intelligence Committee demanded answers from Gabbard on her past support of Edward Snowden, who leaked classified information and then fled the United States.
Gabbard authored legislation to have Snowden pardoned.
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) asked Gabbard, "Was he a traitor when he took America's secret and then ran to China and became a Russian citizen?"
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Gabbard repeated a line she wrote in her opening statement, saying that Snowden "broke the law." She refused to say whether she continued to support him or agree with his actions.
Her refusal to label Snowden a traitor drew criticism from both Republican and Democratic senators. She also appeared to defend Snowden's actions, saying he "exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government."
Andrew Desiderio, a senior congressional reporter at Punchbowl News, said he asked Lankford his thoughts on Gabbard's refusal to label Snowden a traitor.
"Kinda surprised. I thought that was gonna be an easy softball question," he replied.
When asked if her response could derail her confirmation, Lankford replied: “I think there are a lot of questions after it, yeah.”
Snowden stole 1.5 million files, including 900,000 Department of Defense documents, compromising critical intelligence capabilities. "An entire generation of intelligence was lost," according to former NSA and National Intelligence director Michael McConnell.
Additionally, Russia likely gained access to all of Snowden's information, giving them insight into U.S. intelligence capabilities and allowing adversaries to change how they communicate, making it more difficult for U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor terrorist groups.
“What we’ve seen in the last six to eight months is an awareness by these groups of our ability to monitor communications and specific instances where they’ve changed the ways in which they communicate to avoid” surveillance, Matthew Olsen, then-director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said at the time. “It certainly puts us at risk of missing something that we are trying to see, which could lead to … an attack.”