Don't get distracted by President-elect Donald Trump's decision to choose for his team a Fox News anchor who thinks germs aren't real because he can't see them, a vaccine-denier who confessed to Roseanne Barr that he once staged a bear cub crime scene, and a Florida man subjected to a federal probe over accusations he had sex with a minor — the real problem is Tulsi Gabbard, a new report contends.
The intelligence community is terrified at the prospect that a former congresswoman from Hawaii with a problematic habit of spreading Russian propaganda could be the next Director of National Intelligence, Time Magazine reported on Friday.
“We are all reeling,” a current intelligence official told Time.
Gabbard, a former Democrat, could claim control of 16 intelligence agencies and gain access to the nation's most secret security programs, Time reported.
Insiders told Time they're afraid Gabbard will do work for the Kremlin — and are considering resigning rather than work for her.
"Intelligence analysts are most concerned that Gabbard, in the role of director of national intelligence, might be motivated to censor intelligence conclusions critical of Russia and shut down funding for potentially fruitful investigations," Time reported.
"Gabbard has stood out for her foreign policy views. She has long-been skeptical of American intelligence analysis and has taken public policy positions that echo Russian propaganda."
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The role typically requires Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation to insure the nominee has no problematic ties to foreign governments, Time reported.
"While in Congress in 2017, Gabbard met with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad after the U.S. had broken diplomatic relations with the country over his bloody crackdown against his own people," Time reported. "Russia is a long-time backer of Assad and has supplied troops and weapons to prop up Assad’s government during Syria’s 13-year-long civil war."
Gabbard said the U.S. should not support opposition fighters in Syria and wrongly denied its military attacked citizens with chemical weapons, Times reported.
In 2022, Gabbard shared a disproven conspiracy theory advanced by Russia and targeting Ukraine, according to the report.
"Then-Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., said Gabbard had embraced 'actual Russian propaganda' and called it 'traitorous,'" Times reported. "Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said Gabbard was 'parroting fake Russian propaganda.'"
In 2019, Gabbard's longshot presidential bid drew favorable coverage from Russian propaganda sites, spurring then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to suggest Russians were ‘grooming’ a Democrat to help Trump win.
"Two years ago, Gabbard announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party, which she decried as 'under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness,'" Time reported.
"Last month, she announced at a Donald Trump rally in North Carolina that she was a Republican," it further stated.