Warner Calls On Intel Watchdog To Review Gabbard’s Election Security Work

Sen. Mark Warner is urging a government watchdog to probe whether Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is misusing her position as America’s spy chief to boost false claims of foreign interference in U.S. elections to aid President Donald Trump, according to a letter first obtained by POLITICO.

“The Intelligence Community’s ability to identify, characterize, and disrupt foreign threats targeting U.S. elections is dependent on longstanding laws, agency regulations, and norms that prohibit the Intelligence Community from interfering in, or creating the perception of interfering in, U.S. politics,” the Virginia Democrat wrote Tuesday to Intelligence Community Inspector General Chris Fox. “I ask that you immediately initiate efforts to oversee that appropriate laws and agency regulations are being observed given recent developments.”

Warner says he was particularly alarmed to learn that the Justice Department’s raid last month on a Fulton County, Georgia, voting center was based on a tip from Kurt Olsen, a former Trump campaign lawyer who backed his push to overturn the 2020 election. News of Olsen’s role in prompting the raid was recently revealed in an unsealed affidavit.

Olsen, now a special government employee in the White House, has been granted access to sensitive U.S. intelligence on the 2020 election to probe for fraud or other irregularities in that year’s vote — which Warner says is another red flag. POLITICO first reported on Olsen’s extensive access to U.S. spy material.

“While there is ample reason to fear that Mr. Olsen and Director Gabbard’s efforts seek to manipulate prior intelligence to undercut the voluminous classified and public assessments on foreign threats to the 2016 and 2020 elections,” Warner writes, “I also have concerns that Mr. Olsen and Director Gabbard may seek to manipulate more recent intelligence, including to validate President Trump’s unprecedented and unconstitutional effort to subordinate state and local elections to Executive Branch demands.”

Asked about the letter, Olivia Coleman, a spokesperson for Gabbard, pointed to a prior comment shared with POLITICO on Olsen: “Every individual who is granted access to classified information goes through an extensive background investigation, including record checks and personal interviews, with a trained investigator to ensure that the individual is trustworthy and does not pose a threat to national security.”

The letter from Warner to Fox, a Trump appointee, is unlikely to lead to any meaningful action. But it marks the latest salvo in an escalating spat between Warner and Gabbard.

The senior democrat on the Senate Intelligence panel has questioned Gabbard’s qualifications for the job since the former Hawaii lawmaker became Trump’s surprise selection for the role.

Warner renewed his attacks on Gabbard after she was pictured on site at the FBI raid, and after she admitted to facilitating a highly unusual call between an FBI field office and Trump while there. He also expressed alarm at reports that Gabbard’s office obtained electronic voting machines from Puerto Rico to probe them for vulnerabilities.

The Office Director of National Intelligence has traditionally focused on foreign threats to U.S. elections and does not have a statutory role in domestic criminal matters. The affidavit underlying the FBI raid did not contain allegations pointing to foreign interference.

Gabbard has insisted neither she nor Trump applied any undue pressure on the FBI agents in Georgia, and claimed her presence there was directly requested by Trump — though conflicting narratives of who exactly in the administration sent her there emerged later. She also says that her office has broad authority to protect U.S. elections.

Gabbard accused Warner earlier this month of knowingly exaggerating claims that she buried an intelligence community whistleblower complaint for political reasons. Republicans who saw or were briefed on the whistleblower complaint, including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), say Gabbard did nothing incriminating.

“Either Senator Warner knows these facts and is intentionally lying to the American people, or he doesn’t have a clue how these things work and is therefore not qualified to be in the U.S. Senate — and certainly not the Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee,” Gabbard posted at the time.