In his opening statement, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the committee, claimed Gabbard’s office is falling short in protecting U.S. elections from foreign interference, accusing Gabbard of an “organized effort to misuse her national security powers to interfere in domestic politics … and provide a pretext for the president’s unconstitutional efforts to seize control of the upcoming elections.”
“For months, the committee has repeatedly requested briefings from the IC, briefings that are required by law, on legitimate foreign threats to the midterms,” Warner said. “We have received no response.”
The Virginia Democrat accused Gabbard of misusing her authority to “interfere” in domestic politics, highlighting her presence at a law enforcement operation to seize election ballots and voting machine records in Fulton County, Georgia. Fulton County, which Mr. Trump lost in 2020, has long been a source of frustration for the president. Gabbard told lawmakers the president requested her presence.
“When the warrant supporting the raid was unsealed, it showed something deeply troubling: there was no foreign connection to justify the involvement of our nation’s top spy,” Warner said.
“This raises one very serious question — if the intelligence community is not being deployed, mobilized against foreign threats, why is it being deployed at all on a domestic issue? The DNI’s appearance at this raid, as well as her involvement in seizing voting machines from Puerto Rico, suggests something that should also alarm every American: I believe an organized effort to misuse her national security powers to interfere in domestic politics and potentially provide a pretext for the president’s unconstitutional efforts to seize control of the upcoming elections.”
Turning to the FBI, Warner also said agents working on a task force focused on threats from Iran, “clearly something that’s pretty damn important right now,” were “dismissed because they had previously participated in the investigation of the president’s mishandling of classified information.”
Warner also criticized the administration’s evacuation of Americans in the Middle East.
“This was a foreseeable security crisis,” Warner said. “When you start a war of choice, when there was no imminent threat, you should be able to prepare to make sure you get Americans out of the war zone.”
