An explosive whistleblower complaint about National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard is currently “locked in a safe” and remains inaccessible to lawmakers trying to review it, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
“A cloak-and-dagger mystery reminiscent of a John le Carré novel is swirling around the complaint, which is said to be locked in a safe,” the Journal report reads. “It also implicates another federal agency beyond Gabbard’s, and raises potential claims of executive privilege that may involve the White House, officials said.”
Lodged last May with the intelligence community’s inspector general, the complaint’s contents remain unknown — though the Journal reported "a U.S. intelligence official has alleged wrongdoing by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard."
If disclosed, could cause “grave damage to national security,” one official told the Journal on the condition of anonymity.
Its existence was first made known to lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees last November after the whistleblower’s attorney sent a letter to Gabbard accusing her office of blocking lawmakers’ access to it, a letter that was reviewed by the Journal and first reported on Monday. The staff for Democratic lawmakers on intelligence committees have tried to gain access to the complaint, but to “little success,” the outlet reported.
“From my experience, it is confounding for [Gabbard’s office] to take weeks – let alone eight months – to transmit a disclosure to Congress,” said Andrew Bakaj, the attorney for the whistleblower in a statement.
Bakaj, who also had also represented the Central Intelligence Agency officer who filed the 2019 whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s first impeachment, said even he had been unable to access the whistleblower complaint. A representative of the inspector general who spoke with the Journal on the condition of anonymity said that the complaint had been locked in a safe due to its “exceptionally” explosive contents.
“Some complaints involve exceptionally sensitive materials necessitating special handling and storage requirements,” they told the Journal. “This case is one of them.”
