President Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, faced an hourslong hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, fielding a bevy of questions related to her qualifications and previous remarks related to national security.
Gabbard appeared before the intelligence committee on Thursday morning where she worked to rally support from lawmakers ahead of Senate committee and floor votes.
Fox News Digital reported ahead of the hearing that Gabbard did not have a majority of its committee members’ votes, which are necessary to move to the full Senate, according to a senior Intel Committee aide. Gabbard likely will need every Republican vote to move past the committee, assuming Democrats vote against her.
A spokesperson for Gabbard brushed off concerns that Gabbard would not have enough committee votes in a statement to Fox News Digital ahead of the hearing.
‘Anonymous sources are going to continue to lie and smear to try and take down the President’s nominees and subvert the will of the American people and the media is playing a role in publishing these lies,’ the spokesperson said. ‘That doesn’t change the fact that Lt. Col. Gabbard is immensely qualified for this role and we look forward to her hearing.’
Fox News Digital compiled the top five moments, exchanges and highlights from the hearing, which ended ahead of 1 p.m. on Thursday before it moved to a closed session later in the afternoon.
Gabbard rails she’s no one’s ‘puppet’ in opening remarks
Gabbard kicked off her Thursday hearing by preemptively combating ‘lies and smears’ she anticipated to hear from some Senate lawmakers, including that she simultaneously operates as a ‘puppet’ for Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and others.
‘Before I close, I want to warn the American people who are watching at home: You may hear lies and smears in this hearing that will challenge my loyalty to and my love for our country,’ Gabbard said.
‘Those who oppose my nomination imply that I am loyal to something or someone other than God, my own conscience and the Constitution of the United States,’ she continued. ‘Accusing me of being Trump’s puppet, Putin’s puppet, Assad’s puppet, a guru’s puppet, Modi’s puppet, not recognizing the absurdity of simultaneously being the puppet of five different puppet masters.’
‘The same tactic was used against President Trump and failed,’ she said of the accusations against her.
Gabbard’s critics have slammed her since Trump’s election win and her nomination, including claiming she lacks the qualifications for the role, questioning her judgment over her 2017 meeting with then-Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and labeling her a ‘likely a Russian asset,’ as Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed in November 2024.
‘The American people elected President Trump with a decisive victory and mandate for change,’ Gabbard said. ‘The fact is, what truly unsettles my political opponents is I refuse to be their puppet. I have no love for Assad or Gadhafi or any dictator. I just hate al-Qaeda. I hate that we have leaders who cozy up to Islamist extremists, minimizing them to so-called rebels.’
All eyes on Snowden: Was he ‘a traitor’?
Gabbard was questioned on her views of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden repeatedly throughout the hearing, including by ranking member Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., as well as Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Susan Collins, R-Maine, James Lankford, R-Okla., and others.
‘Was Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America?’ Bennet asked Gabbard.
‘He broke the law,’ Gabbard responded.
‘Was Edward Snowden a traitor?’ Lankford also asked.
‘Senator, my heart is with my commitment to our Constitution and our nation’s security,’ she responded. ‘I have shown throughout my almost 22 years of service in the military, as well as my time in Congress, how seriously I take the privilege of having access to classified information and our nation’s secrets. And that’s why I’m committed, if confirmed as director of national intelligence, to join you in making sure that there is no future Snowden-type leak.’
Gabbard previously has made favorable remarks related to Snowden across the years, including in 2019 on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and calling on Trump in 2020 to pardon ‘brave whistleblowers exposing lies and illegal actions in our government,’ such as Snowden.
‘If it wasn’t for Snowden, the American people would never have learned the NSA was collecting phone records and spying on Americans,’ she said on ‘The Joe Rogan Experience’ podcast in 2019.
Snowden was working as an information technology contractor for the National Security Agency in 2013 when he traveled to Hong Kong to meet with three journalists and transferred thousands of pages of classified documents about the U.S. government’s surveillance of its citizens to them. He soon traveled to Russia and planned to head to Ecuador, but federal authorities canceled his passport and indicted him for espionage.
Snowden ultimately remained in Russia and became a naturalized citizen in 2022.
‘Until you are nominated by the president to be the DNI, you consistently praised the actions of Edward Snowden, someone, I believe, jeopardized the security of our nation and then, to flaunt that, fled to Russia,’ Warner said to Gabbard on Thursday morning.
‘You even called Edward Snowden, and I quote here, ‘a brave whistleblower,’’ he said. ‘Every member of this committee supports the rights of legal whistleblowers. But Edward Snowden isn’t a whistleblower, and in this case, I’m a lot closer to the chairman’s words where he said Snowden is, quote, ‘an egotistical serial liar and traitor’ who, quote, ‘deserves to rot in jail for the rest of his life.’ Ms. Gabbard, a simple yes or no question: Do you still think Edward Snowden is brave?’
Gabbard pushed back that Snowden ‘broke the law’ and does not agree with his leak of intelligence.
‘Mr. Vice Chairman, Edward Snowden broke the law,’ she said. ‘I do not agree with or support with all of the information and intelligence that he released nor the way in which he did it. There would have been opportunities for him to come to you on this committee or seek out the IG to release that information. The fact is, he also, even as he broke the law, released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government.’
Gabbard says 9/11 likely could have been prevented
Gabbard argued that the attack on 9/11 likely could have been prevented if government ‘stovepiping’ had not suppressed intelligence communications from reaching other officials.
Stovepiping is understood as information being delivered through an isolated channel of communication to government higher-ups without broadening the distribution of the information.
‘There’s a general consensus that there was a massive intelligence failure,’ Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said during Gabbard’s hearing regarding 9/11. ‘This caught us all by surprise, even though the World Trade Center had been attacked earlier. Do you think stovepipeing was a problem in our intelligence failure?’
‘There’s no question about it, senator,’ Gabbard said before Wicker asked her to elaborate.
‘Senator, when we looked back at the post-9/11 reporting and the post-assessments that were made, it was very clear that there was stovepiping of information and intelligence that occurred at many levels, at the highest but also at the lowest levels,’ she said.
‘Information that was collected by the FBI, information that was collected by the CIA was not being shared,’ she said. ‘It was almost ships passing in the night, where if there was an integration of those intelligence elements and information being shared, it is highly likely that that horrific attack could have been prevented.’
Wicker pressed if the intelligence community could face another ‘stovepipe’ issue in the future if plans to trim the director of national intelligence office of redundant jobs and increase efficiency, as Gabbard has said she will do, is put into effect.
‘The problem that we had in 2001, senator, remains at the forefront of my mind,’ she responded. ‘And as you said, this is exactly why the ODNI was created. Given my limited vantage point not being in this seat, I am concerned that there are still problems with stovepiping that need to be addressed. And in some cases, my concern would be that unnecessary bureaucratic layers may be contributing to that problem.’
Gabbard sheds light on Assad meeting
Critics and Democrat lawmakers have slammed Gabbard for a 2017 meeting with then-Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, claiming it is evidence she would be a ‘danger to the American people’ if confirmed.
Gabbard met with Assad in 2017, years before his government was overthrown in 2024, and publicly revealed the meeting after she returned from Syria. Gabbard was a member of the U.S. House representing Hawaii at the time of the meeting.
‘There is not a great deal in the public record about what you and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad discussed for so long in January of 2017,’ Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., said to Gabbard on Thursday. ‘And I think there’s a great deal of interest from the American people about what was discussed in that meeting. So what did you talk about? And did you press Assad on things like his use of chemical weapons, systematic torture and the killing of so many Syrians?’
‘Yes, Senator. I, upon returning from this trip, I met with people like then-Leader Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, talked to them and answered their questions about the trip,’ Gabbard responded.
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had met with Assad in 2007, despite then-President George W. Bush’s criticism of the visit.
Gabbard remarked that she was surprised by the lack of interest at the time from the intelligence community regarding her own meeting.
‘I was surprised that there was no one from the intelligence community or the State Department who reached out or showed any interest whatsoever in my takeaways from that trip,’ Gabbard said. ‘I would have been very happy to have a conversation and give them a backbrief. I went with former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who had been there many times before and who had met with Assad before. A number of topics were covered and discussed. And to directly answer your question, yes. I asked him tough questions about his own regime’s actions. The use of chemical weapons and the brutal tactics that were being used against his own people.’
‘Were you able to extract any concessions from President Assad?’ Heinrich asked Gabbard.
‘No, and I didn’t expect to, but I felt these issues were important to address,’ she said.
Heinrich continued to press whether now Gabbard considers ‘this trip as good judgment?’
‘Yes, Senator. And I believe that leaders, whether you be in Congress or the president of the United States, can benefit greatly by going and engaging boots on the ground, learning and listening and meeting directly with people, whether they be adversaries or friends,’ Gabbard said.
Gabbard vows to cut office’s ‘redundancies’
Gabbard vowed that she would cut redundancies from the office of the director of national intelligence in an effort to streamline efficiency and prevent intelligence failures that can lead to devastation and tragedy.
‘I’ll work to assess and address efficiencies, redundancies and effectiveness across ODNI to ensure focus of personnel and resources is on our core mission of national security,’ she said as part of her opening remarks on Thursday. ‘In my meetings that I’ve had with many of you, you expressed bipartisan frustration about recent intelligence failures as well as the lack of responsiveness to your requests for information, whether it’s the surprise Oct. 7th Hamas terrorist attack to the sudden takeover of Syria by Islamist extremists, failures to identify the source of COVID, anomalous health incidents, UAPs, drones and more. If confirmed, I look forward to working with you to address these issues.’
The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked Gabbard to elaborate on her mission of cutting government fat from the office, including asking her if she would restore it to ‘its original size, scope and function.’
‘Over the years, however, the ODNI has strayed from this vision to an organization that now publicly boasts nearly 2,000 people, more than half of whom are not detailed from an intelligence agency but rather are career ODNI bureaucrats,’ Cotton said. ‘They’ve even developed centers that are producing their own analysis. Will you commit today to working with this committee, to restoring the ODNI to its original size, scope and function?’
‘Yes, Senator,’ Gabbard responded. ‘I look forward to working with you and the committee as I, if confirmed, assess the current status of who is working in the ODNI and the function that they fulfill to make sure of its effectiveness and elimination of redundancies and bloating.’
Gabbard has served as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves since 2021 after previously serving in the Hawaii Army National Guard for about 17 years. She was elected to the U.S. House representing Hawaii during the 2012 election cycle, serving as a Democrat until 2021. She did not seek re-election to that office after throwing her hat in the 2020 White House race.
Gabbard left the Democratic Party in 2022, registering as an independent, before becoming a member of the Republican Party in 2024 and offering her full endorsement of Trump in his presidential campaign.
Gabbard has been outspoken against creating new wars, declaring in her speech in October 2024 during Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally that a vote for Harris was a vote for ‘war.’
‘I’ve served now for over 21 years,’ she said. ‘I’ve deployed to different war zones three times over that period, and I’ve seen the cost of war for my brothers and sisters who paid the ultimate price. I carry their memories and their sacrifice in my heart every day. So, this choice that we have before us as Americans is critical. It’s important to us. It’s important to those of us who serve, who have volunteered to put our lives on the line for the safety, security and freedom of our country and our people.’
‘A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for Dick Cheney,’ she said at the time. ‘And it’s a vote for war, more war, likely World War III and nuclear war. A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for a man who wants to end wars, not start them, and who has demonstrated already that he has the courage and strength to stand up and fight for peace.’
Fox News Digital’s Morgan Phillips and Julia Johnson contributed to this report.
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