Tulsi Gabbard, the nominee to become director of national intelligence, is one step closer to confirmation after the Senate crossed a procedural hurdle Monday.
Senators voted 52-46 to approve a cloture motion on Gabbard’s nomination. The vote on confirmation could come as soon as late Tuesday unless members agree to shorten the time for debate.
Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., praised Gabbard in a floor speech ahead of the vote, highlighting her “plans to focus on identifying and eliminating redundancies and inefficiencies” as well as her intent to prosecute leakers “to the full extent of the law.”
“In recent years, there have been some significant intelligence failures, and these failures aren’t confined to one agency or one part of the world,” Thune said. “The intelligence community needs to refocus on its core mission: collecting intelligence and providing unbiased analysis of that information. That’s what Tulsi Gabbard is committed to ensuring if she is confirmed.”
Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in the House as a Democrat for eight years, faced bipartisan scrutiny during a confirmation hearing in the Senate Intelligence Committee last month. Chief among lawmakers’ concerns was her support for whistleblower Edward Snowden and a 2017 trip to Syria in which she met with then-leader Bashar Assad.
But Republicans moved her through the committee on a party-line vote. The Monday cloture vote was also along party lines, with Sens. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., missing the vote.
Democrats on Monday again raised concerns about Gabbard.
Senate Intelligence Vice Chair Mark Warner, D-Va., said ahead of the vote that his concerns about Gabbard’s potential confirmation have been heightened by recent Trump administration actions impacting intelligence and related agencies.
Trump said on Feb. 7 he would fire some of the FBI agents who worked on cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in the Capitol, but not all of them. The same day a federal judge temporarily halted the administration from making public a list of the FBI officials involved in cases tied to the attack.
Warner also voiced concern about reports that the CIA sent an unclassified email with a list of recent hires as an effort to comply with an executive order to reduce the government’s workforce.
“We need leaders in the intelligence community and throughout government who are prepared to stand up to those short-sighted attacks to our workforce at the expense of our national security,” Warner said. “Unfortunately, I don’t believe Ms. Gabbard is such a leader. Nor is she well suited, by dint of experience or judgment, to serve as director of national intelligence.”
Lawmakers from both parties pushed Gabbard at her hearing to call Snowden a traitor. She had introduced a resolution during her time in the House encouraging the federal government to drop all charges against Snowden.
But she declined to do so.
“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 that led to serious reforms that Congress undertook,” she said during the hearing.
Gabbard later told the panel that she would not back a pardon of Snowden if confirmed. She also said she doesn’t regret her controversial trip to Syria, but she “shed no tears for the fall of the Assad regime.” Assad fled to Russia as a coalition of forces took over the country.
As director of national intelligence, Gabbard would lead an intelligence office that spans 18 agencies and organizations.
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