Spy chief Tulsi Gabbard is on the hunt for “deep state” leakers — prompted at least in part by damaging reporting that undermined the White House’s case for an immigration crackdown.
Her leak investigation, however, may already be running afoul of the law, a Senate Intelligence Committee member said this week.
Gabbard failed to notify Congress about her search for leakers despite a law requiring her to do so for “significant” disclosures, Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said at a Wednesday hearing.
King, who caucuses with the Democrats, said he thought there was no question the law had been triggered.
“If it was important enough to tweet it, it would seem to me it was important enough to notify this committee,” King said.
“If it was important enough to tweet it, it would seem to me it was important enough to notify this committee.”
King’s comments underscored how Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, has managed to alienate committee Democrats at the same time as she has drawn public criticism from President Donald Trump.
Under the disclosure law, Gabbard is also supposed to provide the committee with an initial damage assessment of significant leaks, laying out what kind of harm they have supposedly caused the government. She also has yet to do that, King said.
The law does appear to allow Gabbard’s office some wiggle room. It is only triggered by “significant” leaks, making the formal disclosure something of a judgment call.
The agency has discussed the leaks with committee staff, an official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence told The Intercept.
If the law hasn’t been triggered, however, that would undermine the case for a leak probe that Gabbard announced in dramatic terms, according to Lauren Harper, the Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy at the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Following the leak, the Freedom of the Press Foundation received a declassified version of the document in question released by Gabbard under the Freedom of Information Act. The document undermined a administration talking point about the threat from the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which has been used to justify Trump’s immigration crackdown.
“Congress should know about investigations if leaks actually damage national security,” Harper said in an email, “but the fact that ODNI hasn’t provided a damage assessment for this leak helps prove our point that the leak — and the official FOIA release — didn’t damage national security at all. It informed the public about one of the administration’s most pernicious lies to-date.”
Venezuelan Threat?
Weeks after Attorney General Pam Bondi scrapped protections for journalists ensnared in Justice Department leak investigations, King’s revelation also raises fresh questions about how Trump’s administration is handling such probes.
Gabbard has not described the full scope of the leak investigations, but they are connected at least in part to one of the most damaging revelations from inside the intelligence community this year.
Trump has justified mass deportation by claiming that the Tren de Aragua is engaged not just in drug trafficking but also an “invasion” of the U.S. under the direction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government.
In mid-April, however, the Washington Post reported on a consensus assessment of the nation’s spy agencies that Tren de Aragua was not acting under official direction and had at most low-level contacts with the Maduro government. The assessment was produced by the National Intelligence Council, which reports to Gabbard.
The newspaper cited “people familiar with the matter” as its sources, prompting Gabbard to blast the disclosure as the work of “deep state” actors.
Although Gabbard assailed the leaks, her office in May declassified the assessment and released it to the Freedom of the Press Foundation under a Freedom of Information Act request. The document proved that the leakers had correctly described the assessment.
Although Gabbard announced the leak probe with a splash, she appears never to have followed through.
Gabbard didn’t stop at badmouthing the leakers, however. Later in April, she announced on X that she had referred a leak investigation to the Justice Department. Her chief of staff said in a since-deleted post that the investigation included the Tren de Aragua assessment.
In her post about the referrals, Gabbard painted the potential damage from leaks in dramatic terms, saying that they could put “our nation’s security at risk.”
“These deep-state criminals leaked classified information for partisan political purposes to undermine POTUS’ agenda,” she said.
Although Gabbard announced the leak probe with a splash, she appears never to have followed through with the next step required in serious cases.
Under the law, the director of national intelligence has seven days to inform the House and Senate Intelligence committees about a “significant” leak of classified information.
Such a notification has never been sent, King said Wednesday. The office of the committee’s ranking Democrat, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, confirmed that it has not received one either.
Criticism Across the Board
King’s public comments come as Gabbard faces scrutiny from Trump on down, and as a top Republican mounts a push to slash her agency’s size.
Trump said hours before he launched strikes on Iran that Gabbard was “wrong” about intelligence showing that the country’s leaders had not decided to build a nuclear weapon.
Earlier this month, Democrats including Warner assailed Gabbard’s decision to place a staffer of hers inside the nominally independent inspector general for the intelligence community, which is supposed to protect whistleblowers and call out fraud at spy agencies. Gabbard also fired the inspector general’s top lawyer.
Gabbard’s office has defended her actions as a response to the “politicization” of the inspector general’s office.
Gabbard, who has embraced calls for “streamlining” the ODNI, is also staring at a potentially massive downsizing of her agency. On Friday, Intelligence Committee Chair Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., released a draft of a bill that would dramatically downsize the agency’s staff and responsibilities.
Cotton’s bill does not appear to be a direct response to Gabbard’s tenure, since he stated his desire to trim what he calls a “bureaucratic behemoth” before her confirmation.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
