Tulsi Gabbard confirmed as Trump’s director of national intelligence

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman turned Trump supporter, to serve as President Trump’s director of national intelligence.

The Republican-led Senate voted to confirm Gabbard by a party-line vote of 52 to 48 after a handful of Republican skeptics said she had assuaged their earlier concerns about her views on the acquisition and protection of classified intelligence, and about her past conciliatory approach to U.S. adversaries.

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Gabbard, who represented Hawaii for eight years in Congress, has a long track record of controversial views that put her at odds with the U.S. intelligence community. She drew tough questions from members of both parties during a tense confirmation hearing last month.

During that hearing, several Republicans interrogated Gabbard’s support for Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor indicted on espionage charges after he leaked classified information; her sympathetic comments about hostile regimes in Russia and Syria; and her opposition to a government surveillance program, known as 702, that intelligence officials say is critical to national security.

Sen. Mark R. Warner (Virginia), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he is “profoundly worried” that Gabbard “lacks the qualifications or judgments to be DNI.”

“She denied” - against U.S. intelligence assessments that then-Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad “used chemical weapons against his own people,” Warner said Wednesday on the Senate floor, ahead of the vote. “She knowingly met with a Syrian cleric who has vocally threatened to conduct serial bomb attacks against the United States. She sought to blame the United States and NATO for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine,” he said. And Gabbard “publicly praised and defended Edward Snowden when he compromised our nation’s most sensitive collection sources and methods.”

“Even with repeated inquiries from our Republican colleagues, she refused to call Snowden a ‘traitor,’” Warner added.

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During her confirmation hearing, Gabbard professed ignorance about the cleric’s rhetoric, a claim at odds with documentation showing her own messages to staff at the time. She told Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) that she was “offended” by his insinuation that she might harbor some loyalty to Russia. And while she declined to brand Snowden a “traitor,” she insisted that he had violated the law - and that her ideas for intelligence community reform would remove the possibility of a future Snowden-type leak.

Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee narrowly approved Gabbard’s nomination last week in a committee vote along party lines, after Trump’s allies and supporters had harassed Gabbard’s GOP critics, and after lawmakers said they were pleased with her follow-up answers to their questions.

Democrats this week implored GOP lawmakers to resist the “pressure” placed on them by President Donald Trump and reject a nominee that Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) predicted Wednesday “would get no more than ten votes in the Senate” if there was a secret ballot on her confirmation.

“I really don’t believe my Republican colleagues believe she’s the right choice,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, asking Republicans rhetorically: “Do you care more about doing the right thing for our national security, or doing whatever is necessary to keep Donald Trump happy?”

The Senate Republican Whip, John Barrasso (D-Wyoming), said that Gabbard had “extensive” experience handling classified information, dating to her time on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees while serving in Congress. As director of national intelligence, he added, she would “handle classified information properly and lawfully.”

“I’ve heard a lot of debate about Congresswoman Gabbard,” Barrasso said on the Senate floor Tuesday, indirectly disputing criticism aired during her confirmation process - including by some GOP lawmakers - that Gabbard had served as a mouthpiece for Kremlin propaganda and pandered to Syria’s Assad and other Iranian-backed members of his regime. Barrasso said it was a “simple fact” that Gabbard “took a hard line on Russia and Iran.”

Gabbard had supported tough sanctions on Iran and Russia in 2013 and 2014, respectively, and had supported sending weapons to Ukraine after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea, Barrasso noted.

The Senate had been slated to vote on Gabbard’s confirmation after midnight Tuesday, but the leaders of both parties agreed to postpone the vote until Wednesday morning, as six inches of snow blanketed Washington.