Friendly fire hits Trump officials as 'drama' forces shutdown of Tulsi Gabbard group
A task force launched by U.S. intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard to "end weaponization" has fallen apart after "drama" triggered by a memo it circulated that spread false claims — made by a January 6 rioter — against a CIA employee and a former Capitol Police officer.
The group's collapse was detailed in testimony submitted to a U.S. Senate committee.
Written testimony submitted by James E. Erdman III, a CIA senior operations officer formerly assigned to the Director’s Initiatives Group, to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, chaired by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), contradicts a public statement made by Gabbard in February that the task force “was created as a temporary effort.”
“The memo and the ensuing drama that unfolded as a result helped spark a pause in DIG’s work in December 2025, and its ultimate dissolution in January 2026,” Erdman said. “The dissolution of the DIG has halted critical transparency work that the American people voted for when re-electing President Donald Trump.”
Olivia Coleman, Gabbard’s press secretary, declined to comment on the record in response to Erdman’s characterization of the wind-down of the Director’s Initiative Group, other than to repeat a statement issued to the media last November.
“ODNI followed its obligation to report information received concerning the alleged activities of a member of the Intelligence Community to that person’s employing agency,” the statement said.
But an ODNI official speaking on background told Raw Story that the agency has confirmed that the Intelligence Community Inspector General is aware of Erdman's allegations and is working alongside ODNI and interagency partners, to uncover the truth about potential wrongdoing.
Erdman did not include his characterization of the circumstances surrounding the dissolution of the Director's Initiatives Group in his testimony before the Senate committee, which was headlned, "Whistleblower Testimony on the COVID Coverup." His statements about the episode are buried in the final two pages of his written testimony.
Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group was set up to carry out Trump’s Executive Order 14147 entitled “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government,” which directed her, as the director of national intelligence, to review the activities of the Intelligence Community during the previous administration. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi set up a parallel task force known as the Weaponization Working Group to similarly review the Department of Justice for purported “weaponization,” including actions by the Biden administration to “ruthlessly prosecute more than 1,500 individuals associated with January 6.”
The efforts inside the administration to investigate “weaponization” under the Biden administration — or root out perceived political enemies from the federal government, as critics have charged — ballooned into an Interagency Weaponization Working Group, revealed by Reuters in October 2025 and said to have been meeting on a biweekly basis since April of that year. Reuters reported that the Director’s Initiative Group and Interagency Weaponization Working Group shared at least one member, Paul McNamara, a Gabbard aide at ODNI.
Erdman’s written testimony to the Senate Homeland Security Committee sheds new light on how the involvement of Gabbard’s task force in circulating a smear against a federal employee wreaked havoc at the CIA and Department of Justice.
Steve Baker, who was convicted of misdemeanor parading in the Capitol on Jan. 6 — and subsequently pardoned by Trump — contacted ODNI last October with information for a story for Blaze Media in which he falsely accused Shauni Kerkhoff, a former Capitol police officer who is now at the CIA, of planting pipe bombs at the headquarters of Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee on the eve of the attack.
The story quickly unraveled, with Blaze Media ultimately retracting it and firing Baker.
Erdman testified that prior to publication of the story, Director’s Initiatives Group members consulted with senior ODNI leadership about how to pass along Baker’s information to agencies that could appropriately investigate.
“I remember several of my colleagues that were involved recalling that the DIG was directed to draft a memo with Baker’s information that could be circulated to other agencies,” Erdman wrote. Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Aaron Lukas wound up sharing the memo with his counterpart at the CIA, Michael Ellis, Erdman wrote.
On Nov. 4, 2025, Baker and a second Blaze Media reporter, Joseph Hanneman, published an article focused on Kerkhoff’s actions during the Jan. 6 riot. The following day, a subsequent article at Blaze Media described Baker as stating during a radio interview that the pipe bomber would “be named as soon as the relevant agencies have ‘battened down the hatches.’”
Two days later, Kerkhoff was called into work at the CIA, interviewed by two FBI agents about her activities on the night the pipe bombs were set, and placed on administrative leave, according to a lawsuit she filed against Baker and Blaze Media.
Later, after agreeing to meet the FBI at her house to allow a search, Kerkhoff’s lawsuit alleges a caravan of FBI agents “exited their vehicles with their guns drawn and in full tactical gear,” as a helicopter hovered overhead and a bomb-disposal truck parked nearby.
As a result of the torrent of personal attacks on social media, Kerkhoff said she spent money to scrub her private information from the internet and purchase security alarms and cameras for her home. She postponed a planned wedding to her boyfriend, struggled to fall asleep and suffered nightmares, and had to take time off from work for her mental health.
The false claims against Kerkhoff that were circulated by members of the Director’s Initiatives Group also jarred the Department of Justice, including its parallel “weaponization” task force.
The day before Baker's “bombshell” story was published, Ed Martin, the Pardon Attorney at the Department of Justice and at the time the director of the department’s Weaponization Working Group, publicly refuted the false claim against Kerkhoff on X, writing, “This is false.”
Martin’s post was a reply to a post that has since been taken down, but Snopes cited an archived screengrab from a pseudonymous user stating, “U.S. Pardon Attorney and Director of the Weaponization Working Group Administration has determined the identity of the J6 Pipe Bomber. Shauni Kerkhoff is a former Capitol Police Officer and current intelligence operative. Jan. 6th was an FBI/CIA led coup.”
The pipe bomber conspiracy theory caused further headaches for the Department of Justice, along with the FBI, a month after publication of the Blaze Media stories when another man, Brian Cole Jr., was arrested and charged with placing the bombs.
Following Cole’s arrest, Carolyn Rocco, an ODNI employee, made an X post prodding former Attorney General Pam Bondi to scrutinize Jocelyn Ballantine, who was the lead prosecutor on the pipe bomber case. The post, which was previously reported by Raw Story, highlighted Ballantine’s past involvement in prosecuting leaders of the Proud Boys for their actions on Jan. 6.
Rocco was identified by Reuters as a member of the Interagency Weaponization Working Group; it is not known whether she was a part of the Director’s Initiatives Group.
Rocco, who has publicly praised Baker, also reshared a post by another X user that featured a video of Ivan Raiklin — the self-styled “secretary of retribution" — stalking Ballantine outside the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C.
Rocco and Raiklin were both seated behind Erdman during his testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee last week.
The sniping within the cohort of officials assigned to carry out Trump's crusade to address purported "weaponization" during the Biden era hasn't stopped the administration from carrying out the president's campaign of retribution. The Department of Justice unveiled a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" that will consider claims from Jan. 6 rioters, as part of a deal that shields Trump and his family from future prosecution, and is prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey, who earned the president's wrath for the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation into links between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign, for posting a photo of sea shells.