Warner escalates critique of Gabbard at Aspen conference

Yahoo

19-07-2025

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) issued one of his sharpest rebukes yet of Tulsi Gabbard on Friday, growing increasingly heated as he told an audience at a national security conference that the director of national intelligence isn't fit for the job and suggested her actions are driving U.S. allies to scale back intelligence sharing with America.
'Tulsi Gabbard is not competent to be the director of national intelligence,' Warner said during a panel at the Aspen Security Forum, as he embarked on a three-minute critique of her performance on the job since she was sworn in in February.
Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, hasn't been shy about criticizing Gabbard. He made similar assertions about her competency and his concerns about allies reducing intel sharing in an appearance on an intelligence podcast last month.
But his Friday comments were to a much broader audience and amounted to a wide-ranging assault on the former Democratic lawmaker's competence and credibility.
They also come after Trump's own frustration with Gabbard burst into the open. A video Gabbard posted warning of the dangers of nuclear war in early June drew a strong private rebuke from Trump, POLITICO first reported, and she was not included in some of the key war planning ahead of last month's air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. She also did not appear alongside other U.S. defense officials for congressional briefings about the impact of the attacks on Iran's nuclear program.
Since then, Gabbard has reiterated her backing of Trump's policies. On Friday, she released new documents about the 2016 election that she claimed detailed a 'treasonous conspiracy' by the Obama administration to usurp Trump's win.
Meanwhile, Democrats have continued to accuse Gabbard of politicizing her role and mishandling sensitive spy information, hoping their criticism lands with national-security-minded colleagues in the GOP.
Warner was ready with specific examples of what he considers the former Democratic lawmaker's missteps.
He accused Gabbard of firing intelligence officials who didn't 'cook the books' on an intelligence assessment tying the Venezuelan government to a criminal gang operating in the U.S. He blamed her for Trump's sudden — and still unexplained — decision to oust the top two officials at NSA this April. And, he said Gabbard had appeared on more partisan media than any previous DNI in history, where she often 'trashed' her own workforce.
Warner said those instances, along with Gabbard's participation in a series of Signal chats on impending military strikes against Houthi militias in Yemen, had prompted America's closest allies to share less information with the United States.
'I do believe our Five Eye partners and others are not sharing as much information as they would,' Warner said. The Five Eyes is an intelligence sharing partnership made up of the U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
But Warner may have gotten ahead of himself. A spokesperson for Warner subsequently said the senator merely intended to express his concern that allies might in the future withhold critical intelligence from the U.S.
Warner's critique of Gabbard came during a broader panel with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) focused on Congress' decision to claw back billions of dollars in foreign aid spending. But Warner appeared to relish the opportunity to pivot to the DNI when asked whether he trusted Gabbard to be candid with U.S. intelligence — to which he quickly shot back: 'No.'
A spokesperson for the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Warner's comments.
In her confirmation hearing in January, Gabbard promised to overhaul a corrupt, bloated and biased intelligence community. She has previously argued that the senior intelligence officials she ousted over the Venezuela assessment were themselves politicized. She played no known role in Trump's dismissal of the top two NSA officials and has contested claims that U.S. allies are sharing less information with the U.S. since her appointment.
In Friday's panel discussion, both Coons and Warner also offered sharp criticism of Republicans' ongoing efforts with the White House to cancel more than $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting funding.
'The depth of the cut and the harm to our reputation, I think, is deep and broad, and this rescission has set us on a very, very bad path as an appropriator,' Coons said during the panel.