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

WASHINGTON (AP) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard withheld a complaint she filed about her conduct from members of Congress for eight months, claiming the delay was necessary for a legal review, a lawyer for the person who made the allegations said Monday.

Gabbard’s office said the complaint was reviewed by the Office of the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community, which deemed it unreliable. The person then sought to have the complaint referred to members of the congressional intelligence committees, as allowed by federal law, but that did not happen.

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Andrew Bakaj, a lawyer for the person who filed the complaint, said he could not identify his client or employer or provide details about the allegations due to the nature of their work. But he said there was no justification for keeping the complaint out of Congress since last spring.

Olivia Coleman, Gabbard’s press secretary, said there was no delay in getting the complaint to members of the intelligence committees, though she added that the number of classified details in the complaint made the review process “substantially more difficult.”

Gabbard’s office disputed the allegations, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Coleman noted that the inspector general who deemed the complaint unreliable was not chosen by Gabbard and began his work during the administration of then-President Joe Biden.

“Director Gabbard has always been and will continue to support whistleblowers and their right, under the law, to file complaints with Congress, even if they are as completely unfounded as this one,” Coleman wrote in a post on X.

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Gabbard coordinates the work of the country’s 18 intelligence agencies. In an unusual role for an intelligence chief, she was on the scene last week when the FBI served a search warrant on elections offices in Georgia, which was central to Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the 2020 election, drawing questions from Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Meanwhile, Bakaj asked Congress to investigate how the complaint was handled.

A spokesman for Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Gabbard pledged under oath during her confirmation hearing that she would protect whistleblowers and make sure Congress was kept informed.

“We expect her to honor those commitments and comply with the letter and spirit of the law,” Warner’s office said in a statement.

The Office of the Inspector General, charged with providing independent oversight of the intelligence community, did not immediately respond to questions about the complaint.

A former CIA intelligence officer and former intelligence community whistleblower, Bakaj’s account of a phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky helped launch the first of two impeachment cases against the Republican leader during his first team.

Trump was impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate in February 2020 over the call in which he asked the Ukrainian president for a “favor” — to announce that he was investigating Democrats including his 2020 election rival, Joe Biden.

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.