Gabbard on Path to Confirmation After Senate Committee Backs Her
(Bloomberg) -- Former US Representative Tulsi Gabbard was endorsed by the Senate Intelligence Committee to be Donald Trump’s spy chief, opening the way for a Senate confirmation vote despite criticism of her past stances including championing a US intelligence contractor who divulged top-secret programs.
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The committee voted Tuesday to advance her nomination to the Senate floor. The panel voted along party lines in a closed session, according to an official familiar with the voting.
Gabbard is now on a path to confirmation, with several members of the intelligence panel who had been considered her strongest Republican skeptics backing her.
In her confirmation hearing, Gabbard defied demands from senators on the panel that she describe as a “traitor” Edward Snowden, who revealed surveillance programs and then fled to Russia.
She nonetheless won backing from Republican doubters including Susan Collins of Maine, who said she shared Gabbard’s view that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence she has been nominated to lead has grown too large and unwieldy.
Another Republican skeptic, Todd Young of Indiana, backed Gabbard after she committed in writing to hold accountable anyone who breaks laws against revealing secret intelligence and that she wouldn’t lobby the administration for leniency on Snowden. As a member of Congress, she introduced legislation to drop criminal charges against Snowden.
Gabbard, whose past stances have been criticized as supporting authoritarians such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Syria’s now-ousted Bashar al-Assad, also promised to keep her political views and bias out of national intelligence.
She has been a harsh critic of US foreign policy and has attacked the intelligence community for past failures, going back to the buildup of the Iraq War.
A lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve who has deployed to Iraq and Kuwait, Gabbard has often pointed to her past experiences as foundational to her political views and her drive to push back against “regime-change wars.”
Gabbard’s political views have fluctuated over the years. A 43-year-old former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, Gabbard backed progressive Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for president in 2016 before pursuing her own Democratic presidential campaign in 2020. She ultimately dropped out of that race to endorse Joe Biden, then four years later flipped sides to back Trump instead.
--With assistance from Natalia Drozdiak and Billy House.
(Updates that vote was along party lines in second paragraph)
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