A Democratic lawmaker raised "disturbing" concerns about Donald Trump's choice to oversee the nation's most secret information.
The president-elect has nominated former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, but Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI) echoed concerns that have been raised for years about her appetite for Russian propaganda and her controversial 2017 meeting with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
"I'm the ranking member for counterterrorism law enforcement, and intelligence on the Homeland Security Committee, and I've been very vocal about particularly why Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel are not the right picks," Magaziner said. "Tulsi Gabbard has a disturbing history of taking the pro-Russia position on every major geopolitical event of the last several years. She you know, immediately when Russia invaded Ukraine, was online trying to justify the Russian invasion. She spread the false conspiracy theory that the United States was building bioweapons labs in Ukraine, which is not true."
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The former president's relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin has been scrutinized for years, and a Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee investigation found his 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat, but Magaziner said Gabbard was even more solicitous toward the foreign adversary.
"She's taken the pro-Russia position even when that was not Donald Trump's position," Magaziner said. "You know, she was an apologist for Assad in Syria. Trump was never an Assad supporter, but Tulsi Gabbard was. Assad, of course, is an ally of Vladimir Putin. When president Trump took out Gen. [Qasem] Soleimani in Iran, she publicly criticized Trump for that. Iran [is] another Russian ally."
"So the pattern with Tulsi Gabbard that is disturbing is that she takes the pro-Russia position when it's Trump's position – and we all know that Trump is too pro-Putin – but she also takes the pro-Russia position when it's not Trump's position," Magaziner added. "There's a clear pattern there that's very disturbing. She cannot be trusted to run our nation's intelligence gathering operation, and [FBI director nominee] Kash Patel, we all know, has no law enforcement background at all. He was being chosen just because Donald Trump thinks that he will enact his retribution and his revenge against his political enemies."
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