WATCH LIVE: Warner slams Trump and Gabbard’s involvement in FBI search of Fulton County elections office

WASHINGTON (AP) — Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told lawmakers in a letter Monday that she attended the FBI’s inspection of an election center in Fulton County, Georgia, last week because President Donald Trump asked her to be there.

Senator Mark Warner is expected to hold a press conference at 12:30 pm EST. Watch the live stream in our video player above.

She also admitted that she “facilitated” what she described as a brief phone call between Trump and the FBI agents who conducted the search, but insisted that neither she nor the president issued any directives.

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

The letter, addressed to top Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, marks Gabbard’s first detailed explanation for her unusual presence in the FBI search, where agents armed with a warrant seized hundreds of boxes containing ballots and other documents related to the 2020 election in Georgia’s most populous county.

Fulton County, which votes overwhelmingly Democratic, has been a frequent target of the president’s ire. He has long insisted without evidence that widespread voter fraud in the county cost him victory in Georgia in his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Gabbard’s arrival in Georgia raised immediate questions among Democratic officials because the FBI’s search of the election center was a law enforcement activity, not an intelligence activity, and because the DNI position typically focuses on foreign threats rather than domestic concerns.

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

Gabbard said in her letter that her presence was specifically requested by Trump and that she accompanied senior FBI officials “under my broad legal authority to coordinate, integrate, and analyze intelligence related to election security.”

Gabbard was central to the Trump administration’s efforts to cast doubt on the intelligence community’s conclusions about Russian interference on Trump’s behalf during his successful 2016 campaign, and Democrats fear her presence in Georgia lays the foundation for the federal government to assert that the 2020 race he lost was somehow tainted by foreign interference or to cast doubt on the integrity of future elections.

Gabbard noted in her letter that electoral systems were at risk of foreign interference, citing what she said was intelligence showing that electronic voting systems were “vulnerable to exploitation” that could lead to vote tampering.

She said that in order to “preserve the integrity of our elections, we must understand whether there has been foreign or other malicious interference in our elections, and whether there are weaknesses in our electoral infrastructure that could be exploited in future elections.” She did not explain why Fulton County was being audited, saying she had not seen the memo that investigators submitted to the judge for approval.

Audits, state officials, courts and Trump’s former attorney general have rejected the idea that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election that could have changed the outcome. The 2024 election, which Trump won, was also considered relatively problem-free at the polls.

Gabbard also appeared to confirm a New York Times report earlier Monday that she helped arrange a call between Trump and FBI agents. It is rare for the president to communicate directly with senior FBI personnel about specific investigations.

“During my visit to the FBI field office in Atlanta, I thanked the FBI agents for their professionalism and great work, and facilitated a short phone call to the Chief to personally thank the agents for their work. He asked no questions, and neither he nor I issued any directions,” she wrote.