Republicans reject complaints about Gabbard while Democrats question the time it took to see her

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders on the House and Senate intelligence committees have rejected a top-secret complaint from an anonymous government insider alleging that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard withheld classified information for political reasons.

He watches: Trump says Gabbard joined the FBI at Fulton County elections center at Bondi’s “insistance.”

Responses this week from Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep. Rick Crawford mean the complaint is unlikely to proceed further, though Democratic lawmakers who also saw the document said they still question why Gabbard’s office took eight months to forward the complaint to Congress as required by law.

Gabbard’s office rejected any allegations of wrongdoing as well as criticism of the referral time frame, saying the complaint included so many confidential details that it necessitated an extensive legal and security review. Some lawmakers were able to see the complaint this week.

Cotton wrote Thursday on X that he agreed with the inspector general’s earlier conclusion that the complaint did not appear credible. He said he believed the complaint was due to political opposition to Gabbard and the Trump administration.

“To be frank, it looks like just another effort by the President’s critics inside and outside of government to undermine policies they don’t like,” the Arkansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote.

When asked about the complaint, Cotton’s office pointed to his social media post.

Read more: The lawyer says Gabbard is filing a complaint about her actions, which her office denies

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Crawford, who is also from Arkansas, said he believed the complaint was an attempt to discredit Gabbard.

Democrats are demanding explanations about why Gabbard took her office months to forward the complaint to the wanted members of Congress. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the law requires such a report to be sent within 21 days.

“The law is clear,” Warner said Thursday at the Capitol. “I think it was an attempt to bury the whistleblower complaint.”

Warner said he also still has questions about the details of the complaint, noting that it has been heavily redacted.

The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said in a written statement that he would continue to look into the matter.

Read more; Top Democrats on Intelligence Committees Question Gabbard’s Presence in Elections Office Raid

In a memo sent to lawmakers this week, the intelligence community’s inspector general said the complaint also accused Gabbard’s general counsel’s office of failing to report a potential crime to the Justice Department. The memo, which contains redactions, does not provide further details about any of the allegations.

Last June, then-Inspector General Tamara Johnson found that Gabbard’s claim that he distributed classified information on political grounds did not appear credible, according to the current watchdog, Christopher Fox. Fox wrote in the memo that Johnson was “unable to assess the apparent credibility” of the accusations against the general counsel’s office.

Fox said he would have considered the complaint non-urgent, unlike the previous inspector general, but he respected his predecessor’s decision and so sent it to lawmakers.

Copies of the top-secret complaint were delivered this week to the “Gang of Eight” — a group consisting of House and Senate leaders from both parties as well as the top four lawmakers on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

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Andrew Bakaj, a lawyer for the person who filed the complaint, said that although he could not discuss the details of the report or the identity of its author, there was no justification for keeping it from Congress since last spring.

Bakaj, a former CIA officer who is now chief legal counsel for Whistleblower Aid, said he heard that significant amendments were made to the complaint before it was presented to members of Congress.

“Given the extensive redactions that we understand exist, even in the version provided to the Gang of Eight, it seems unlikely that anyone could reasonably and in a nonpartisan manner reach the conclusions that Senator Cotton has issued,” Bakaj wrote in a statement to The Associated Press.

Gabbard coordinates the work of the country’s 18 intelligence agencies. It recently drew attention to another matter — one that came to light last week when the FBI served a search warrant on election offices in Georgia that are key to Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the 2020 election.